The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: SOUP poem

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?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.

This month's prompts are sister, shoes, slippers, snow, snowstorm, soccer, soup, stairs, stamp, stepmother.

SOUP

We were a Campbell's soup family. Alphabet soup, chicken noodle, tomato (for the grownups-- I didn't care for it as a child). Sometimes I would carry soup in a thermos to school. Sometimes it leaked. I remember loving the smell of homemade chicken soup simmering in the big pot on the stove. When the time was right, it was my job to dump in the noodles. Also, during our time in Louisiana, I recall church and other gatherings that included big pots of gumbo. Those cajuns can COOK! My mother-in-law Bobbie loved making vegetable soup and corn bread – and I do, too!

Because today is a soup day, I decided to write a poem.

Soup Season

When the wind curls

and the sky unfurls,

pull out a big pot.

Fill it with all you've got:

onions, carrots,

bits of meat. . .

Wait awhile

for it to heat.

Breathe it in, let it steep.

Ladle it into bowls

you can cradle in your lap.

Then blow, slurp.

slop sop!

Soon you'll be good

and warm and cozy

from your ears

all the way to your toesies.

- Irene Latham