Month of Poetry

One of my New Year's resolutions was to write poetry. When someone tweeted that they were joining a month of poetry challenge I thought it would probably be a good start. I've signed on to write a poem every day in January (I missed the first two days. I have terrible commitment issues so it may all come to nothing, but I have written one poem so far which is as many as I wrote all last year).

Anyway, because blogging more regularly is another one of my new year's resolutions, I thought I'd post my poems here. Fred made banana choc-chip muffins this morning, we bought her a cupcake maker for Christmas (like a big sandwich press). In some ways it's kinda silly (it's not that different from making cupcakes in the oven but Fred has a wonderful sense of ownership and productivity when she uses it, and it does actually make especially nice muffins).

My Seven Year Old Daughter is Making Muffins

1. Ingredients

Flour scatters the dust of itself

Milk runneth over

C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ (sucrose molecules arranged by science

In orderly cubes) tumble across the bench

Chocolate drops are measured out covetously

(You are jealous of the riches of your own creation)

Butter, a banana grown old and almost beyond usefulness

And lastly a single brown egg laid by your own hen

(Each warm discovery still a surprise

Like the same astonishing secret told over and over)

2. Making

There is more substance here than in the making of you

You began out of nothing

Merely there was two specks of indifferent matter

Meeting in darkness

3. Eating

You bring me confections

Made of stuff and air

Made of gravity and weightlessness

Of heat and alchemy

Of the labour of the body

Of the transcendence of spirit over matter.