Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Tuesday Poem: Mulling it over



 Mulling it over
   by Maggie Rainey-Smith

Cinnamon cardamom
                     almonds and wasps                      
plump imported raisins
Uncle’s aluminium pan
 the sunlight is thinner    
   Maria who is Greek is fasting 
                  orange peel floats                  
in the dark pool of wine
        I add sugar and schnapps   watch the liquid almost boil   ladle it into warm mugs
        we breathe in the alcohol   swat the wasps   remember the last Good Friday and one
       before             marvel at the yeasty buns          suck the sticky glaze from our fingers
           lift the pale crosses to our lips         knowing that Judas will betray Jesus   that  Pilate
           will wash his hands     that Veronica will wipe his face   a soldier will lance his side
           that he will chat to a couple of thieves just before he  dies                      but
drunk  on  nostalgia 
ripe  in our  loss
it  is  the  triumph
 of  the empty tomb
we  most  admire 
and   raise  our  
 hot mugs of wine
with relief,  glad




Thanks Maggie. Other bloggers are joining me in posting a Tuesday Poem this week [note this list is regularly updated]. The result is a rather wonderful online 'open mike' session or an informal poetry 'journal'. 


UPDATE [tuesday night]: I had a perfect 5 minutes this morning reading the Tuesday Poems and marvelling at the talent of poets Tim Jones, Harvey Molloy,  Claire Beynon, poet and publisher of poems Helen Rickerby, and author of 'Fifi Verses the World' Fifi Colston.   



South Island poets Penelope Todd and Paradoxical Cat joined us with a poem mid-way through the day, and Kay Cooke  slid her poem in three hours before midnight. I only discovered two overseas poets had posted: Premium T   and Vespersparrow today!

You'll also always find a poem on NZ Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen's blog. She's writing an astonishing poem in instalments  called Serial using images from the National Library. A new instalment is published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. 


For my past Tuesday Poems see top right tab on the blog. 



4 comments:

Penelope said...

Gosh, the power of the snowball. Thanks, Mary, for setting this one off. I've posted a poem.

Fifi Colston said...

love this Maggie!

Mary McCallum said...

Thanks Penelope, how wonderful to find you here and thank you for posting a Tuesday Poem. I'm thrilled with this 'snowball'. I've linked to your website on my blogroll now but I have had problems linking directly to your poem on this post, so have directed people to look at the blogroll and click on the Tuesday Poem (that seems to work). When I go directly to your website I see your previous post, when I click on Tuesday Poem, I go to the poem but the url there doesn't want to work for me... I get an error '404' (whatever that could be...)

I have to say, Paradoxical Cat has done a clever thing and linked to this blog post at the bottom here.... I've never quite got the hang of that. Tell me, PC, can you only do that at the start of a post? And can you do it post-post so to speak? Thanks for your poem too...

Harvey Molloy said...

Great idea, Mary. Big thumbs up.