Stone Soup Croutons, 9-21-15, Through

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title the next morning. 

Ryk McIntyre featured last night. It was an amazing performance with a great open mic that had a lot of  sadder pieces some might have called "downers." In all seriousness, it always amazes when the open mic follows some kind of coincidental them, and that theme last night was (for the most part) loss. Or is that only what I was able to hear while running around. Anyway, that's my convenient excuse for the depressing poem below. It was a pleasure to write it, with Ryk's opening poem (the one about making bread) providing the much needed cap.


Through

There is no such thing
as just another August.

As if an ending comes every day.

As if we can't hear a book close
from across a library.

As if a body washed ashore
is as common as sandstone.

For every fruitful bush
there is a failed American beauty rose
on the cutting floor
note even able to love itself.

Sometimes it happens without mourning,
but it's rarer than you think.

Even a nobody came from somewhere,
a grade school photo
waiting to reunite,

a record of their original nose,
their unkicked teeth.

some underlined eulogy
waiting to fit in the back
of a wallet-size.

We fall too fast
to warrant a patient painting.

We are cars speeding through
an E-ZPass without the pass

just so we can be photographed
and someone can remember us.

We pray to be passed down
 like a recipe,


even our families too afraid
to change anything about us.

Note to all poets: Putting yourself down on the list in order 

to not read first is no guarantee.

Special thanks to Chris Warner, Mary Ann Honaker, Reggie Dennis, Jakayla Carvalho, Martha Boss, Johnny Flaherty, Carol Weston, Rachel Eisenberg, Elizabeth Kanze, Erik Nelson and Ryk McIntyre.