The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: DESSERT

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit poet-goddess Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge for Roundup.
For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

Here are February's prompts: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

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DESSERT

When I think of desserts in my childhood I think of my grandparents, and I think of summer: fresh warm watermelons cracked open on the back picnic table, their red or sometimes golden meat attracting birds and ants; peaches off the truck my grandfather hauled from Georgia; homemade ice cream churned in the electric freezer, that grind of salt and ice better music than any ice cream truck ever produced; and strawberry jello mixed with store-bought whipped cream – a special concoction Grandma Dykes always made just for me.

Here it is, in a poem:

A Taste of Summer

warm melons

cracked open

on the back

picnic table,

their red

or golden meat

arousing songbirds

and inviting

black ants

to trail in –

always enough

for everyone

peaches fresh

off the truck

Granddaddy

drove all the way

from Georgia,

the scent

of gasoline

and tickle

of sweet-sticky

juice dribbling

down to our elbows

as we would

bite in

the whine

of the electric

ice cream maker

and the slush

of ice and salt

as we waited:

is it ready yet?

strawberry jello

mixed with

whipped-cream

clouds

in a glass bowl

at the end

of the table,

Grandma saying,

something sweet,

for a sweet girl.

- Irene Latham

This brings to mind "Knoxville, Tennessee" by Nikki Giovanni, which is also full of rich, summer-y flavors! If I were to title mine after the place of my summers, it would be called "Port St. Joe, Florida." Some may recall that Port St. Joe got slammed by a few months ago by Hurricane Michael I still have family there -- everyone is fine -- and it reminds me again of how very resilient coastal Floridians are. So, if I were to title a poem "Port St. Joe, Florida," it would likely be about many other things besides the summer deliciousness I experienced there. 

Maybe some of this will come up in my responses to future Butterfly Hours prompts later this year?? We shall see. :) 

Thank you for reading!