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 (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes up because it's Friday morning.
Stone Soup came back last night. I have a lot on my mind. Some of it on Stone Soup's future. It took a while to get into the groove of this poem, if I ever did. No self-deprecation intended. Just how I felt. I'm glad people were in the audience last night. Sometimes a skipped week is all it takes for some people to never come back. I count myself lucky, which is why I worked on the poem anyway. Owe it to myself and the people feeding me lines. Thanks for reading.
Small Town News
The town crier is marriedSmall Town News
to the man with the word.
This cuts middleman gossip.
Troll rumors of pedophilia
and immigrant caravans
are left in the gutter.
Any lost loved ones
are saved for work's end.
Too much hustle and bustle
for moments of silence.
Their children have no fear
of any parental barrage
of questions. No inquiries
of marriage, the prospects
of grandchildren. News
can only be carried, not forced.
Singers in the park cry,
Where have all the flowers gone?
The couple feel for them.
They have no idea either.
They make a note to let them know
if an answer ever comes.
They never sit at bars
asking, What now?
They simply don't know yet.
At night, they smile at each other
on their closed off porch.
Nothing else is known
once they go inside.
Even here, not all stories
are told, not all sources revealed.
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| Nice to be back. |
Special thanks to Laurel Lambert, Jan Rowe, Martha Boss, Gawaine Ross, Bil Lewis, Nancy Messom and James Van Looy.
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