I was gifted these 3 beautiful strawberries this week.  I put them in a little bowl and looked at them for some time...they smelled soooo good and were so pretty.  I started thinking about the William Carlos Williams poem, the one about the plums in which he apologizes for something that he really doesn't regret doing.  I came up with this poem...

 

 

 

The Strawberry Poem - In Homage to William Carlos Williams

I told you
I would cut the strawberries
  mingle them with yogurt
  but they were
  too red
       and
  juice-burdened
So I bit into them
 whole.

Forgive me.
I couldn't help myself.
 they were as sweet
   as candy
  and just as
    wonderful.


The original poem, if you don't know it, went like this:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

There is a wonderful little book titled "Rose, where did you get that red?" in which the author, Kenneth Koch, took a well-known poem and read it to children and asked them to write something in the same style.  This is my favorite, after he read them "This is Just to Say":

This is just to say
I have taken the eggs
Of the bird's nest
But I didn't have
any sense that the
Mother bird is looking
For its children and
worried.  I am sorry
Mother bird and I shall
return them when they
Hatch.  I just couldn't see
Them out there in the
Cold Weather.

~Hector Figueroa

I am going to keep this little book with me for awhile and do some poetry exercises of my own.  I've been missing poetry lately and it's sort of like dipping a toe into the water after a long winter inside.  The older I get, the more I want to gather the things that I love around me.  Poetry is one of those things I put away for awhile but it's time to bring it out into the light again.  Bear with me.