Stone Soup Croutons, 2-21-24: Nancy Says

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions selected from Stone Soup Poetry'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.

 

I also have a book collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.

 

This week's open mic had a bit of remembrance for Nancy Dodson, who passed away in the beginning of February. I think I know which poems and songs she would have liked (no cat poems, sadly).  

Having published Nancy recently, and having heard her poems over Zoom since 2020,  I tried to figure out how to write a poem in Nancy's style. 

 

I'll miss having her around. She was a stalwart soldier in this phase of Stone Soup's existence. I hope you like the poem.

 

Thanks for reading.

Nancy Says

Life, if you want, can be 

light. On lilacs, on bike
paths to a city's poetry

reliquary, a park to meet
with family or a ballgame.

Talks with friends over
pointless lipstick before

the living are missed, 

before now is yesterday.
Life is forever before
you fall asleep with your

books, in a house that's 

yours, knowing as little 

as the cows do about what

goes on outside. Flood and 

war and you hope there's 

enough water left to baptize

you before you go away,

just for a little while.

 Special thanks to Rita Rusty Rose, Jan Rowe, Bil Lewis, Ken Johnson, Bryan Franco, James Van Loooy, Jeff Taylor and C.C. Arshagra.