Poetry / Writing

SOL: Following a Poem

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

Naomi Shihab Nye has famously said that “poems hide…What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.” I often find inspiration in images, and when I saw this photo on Twitter recently, I knew a poem was hidden within:

Indigo Milk Cap, by Dan Molter [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
What I didn’t expect was where this poem would take me. Which is, after all, the point of writing.

At a bend in the trail
I freeze, startled
by an upturned mushroom.
Suddenly,
I’m at your kitchen table,
wisps of morning breeze,
rich with melodies of songbirds,
drifting in through wide-open windows
as you set an ancient flow-blue
bowl before me.
Nestled within its chipped rim
are glistening blueberries,
which you rose at dawn
to pick,
making sure to leave a few
for the birds.

© Catherine Flynn, 2018

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7 thoughts on “SOL: Following a Poem”

  4. What a lovely morning poem! It’s a beautiful summer morning. I love the juxtaposition picture of freshly picked blueberries in a “flow-blue bowl” with a “chipped rim” … makes me think that this “ancient” bowl has had much loving use, has a special value because it is a thread that ties the present morning to many mornings past — mine and those of women from who I come. And I see my grandmother’s hand placing the bowl before me. I hear her soft voice as she offers me a bit of fresh, thick cream from a blue-flow creamer.

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