I offer no excuses, no explanations. I am far too tired to make the effort …
And yet the poems, the sequences of words keep coming, too fast to be finessed well, a tumble of words and thoughts, and I am unused to this creative wellspring, not having seen its likes in years, decades, and I wonder why, why now, why when I want to gave up on the poems…
Anyway, I wrote a poem another day, and once again, I’m sharing, even though it is rough, because the need to put this out here is stronger than my need to hide, so here is today’s:
The soup
smells of my mother’s homemade soup
drifted down the hall from the kitchen
she used to cook it for us (brothers & sisters),
her personal salve for my wounds
her quiet prayer for my wellness
in a few hours I would blow steam across the surface of the deep bowl
across the sunken bodies of the fulsome vegetables
let the liquid slip across my tongue
taste it in the broth:
hot enough to scorch my soul,
strong enough to feed my heart
thick enough to bind my rent spirit
copious enough to recall my father’s love
bitter enough to remind me of death
with just a dusting of grace
😔

©️ Beatriz Esmer