Day 1 - 1.27.13

Subject or Theme: Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall
Word(s) to Include: celestial
Forbidden Word(s): autumn, fall, spring, summer, winter
Additional Parameters: Pick a season or pick all four as long as I can tell it's about them. Minimum 20 lines (no chained haiku, no matter how tempting it may be).












Tomato Soup Stories


Damp clothes, hats, mittens
haphazardly flung on laundry room line;
boots kicked off, frozen boot-lace sculptures
still tied; hard balls of snow
clumped and melting on the mud room floor;
in red, flapped long underwear-glory
I'd thaw in front of the Franklin Stove.

Cold rumps and legs go through the
prickly/itchy/scratchy warm up. My grandmother
would wrap my red fingers around a mug of her hot chocolate
topped with cinnamon and listen to my nonstop, teeth chattering,
litany of my snowday:

...I built a snowman and a snow lady and snowkids and then I
knocked them down with snowballs and used their bodies to build a snow fort...
I went sliding down the hill on my snowsuit and tried to ride my bike on the ice
but I fell down... I broke all the icicles off the barn and played joust and
I went down the other hill on cardboard boxes until the box fell apart...
and I watched the geese skating to a stop on the lake and one slid
and bowled into the others on his tail feathers...and...

Grilled cheese sandwiches cut in fours around a cup of tomato soup
warm the soul as much as belly. Oyster crackers
floating in an orange sea. I'd drift off to sleep in front of the stove
wearing a tomato smile.


***
Even today, the scent of tomato soup
will fling me back some forty-odd years through a montage
of black and white photographic moments. I imagine them
transparent, held to the heavens, and through the memories,
I see my grandmother, celestial eyes shimmering,
looking forward and smiling.

***


Damp clothes, hats, gloves
haphazardly flung on laundry room line;
swamper boots kicked off,
boot-tracks of snow
trailing and melting on the mud room floor;
in camouflaged long-johns,
my husband thaws in front of the fireplace.

Rubbing cold, chapped hands together, before
warming them around a steaming mug of coffee,
sock-footed legs stretched out, resting on the hearth.
He tells me of his day...a long ramble of strung together
jobs and what-nots, accomplishments and glories:

...I finally hung the Red Wings picture down over the bar... blew out
the driveway...decided I really needed to clean out the garage... I put up hooks
on the ceiling, hung up all my ladder-stands... put the tree-stands out in the back shed,
cleaned off your car, got it in (!) the garage...took the dog for a walk
and the kids were out sliding on the hill by the depot so Bear and I went for a slide,
came back...went and did our driveway again and as long as I was out there,
did across the way, next door and the house at the end of the street...
and, Hon, I was wondering...
do we have any tomato soup?

Of course we do, I answer,
handing him a tray with a bowl of soup,
Saltine crackers swimming
and a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches on either side.
A bit later, I went back in the living room to find
the tray on the floor and my hubby,
fast asleep in the rocker,
a wisp of an orange smile on his face.