Today’s host of the first day of September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Kelsey Bigelow, who works as a mental health poet and renowned author of books, slam poetry events, and writing workshops in Iowa. You can read all about Kelsey and visit today’s prompt and poems here, as she inspires us to think about what lives on the “good side of memories.” Today’s writing is rooted in stream of consciousness writing that can live on in that form or be the start of one that takes root for another.
It’s All in the Kneading and Knowing
the happiest thing
I’ve ever tasted was that moment
when in my grief
soul-gutting tears in a
big-enough-for-all
walls of a VRBO
reverberating sniffles
and crumpled Kleenex
and happy laughs of
oblivious grandchildren playing
with their newest cousin
trying to teach him
to walk at six months
and believing he could
the strains of Amazing Grace
sung to a guitar
by the rest of us trying
to sing with the best of us
believing we could
as we all sat piled high
on the curved couch
pajama-clad, remembering
*******. ********
then one broke the silence
asking for a happier moment
in the autumn – another together
time when smiles returned
then another added
yeah, when
any of us can
make a word from tiles in
turntable Scrabble
and another added
yeah, and only if Mom
brings the pumpkin bread
and right then
in those delicate moments
I knew three things:
that I had taken the reins
as the newest family elder and
that tradition of togetherness
lives on in food tried first
as a flopped recipe
when they’re toddlers, then tested
again and again to perfection
by the time they’re teenagers
and can’t think of gatherings
without it and
that families too
are like that ~
learning to walk
learning to sing
learning to bake
learning to live on
believing
through all the tears and laughter
that together
we can
Common Threads 