I’m a recipe follower. Before I got married, I told my mother I wasn’t moving out unless I got a Betty Crocker cookbook so I’d have the recipe for apple pie. After many years of trying new recipes, though, I learned to be a little more flexible about improvising when I cook. In fact, when it comes to chicken soup, I just start tossing ingredients into the pot. So when my poetry pal and critique group partner, Linda Mitchell, suggested writing about soup, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. This poem, which is basically how I make chicken soup these days, is still a very rough draft.
Soup
In a pot as blue as the sky,
a poem simmers.
Corn kernels
become a hundred tiny suns.
Carrots and potatoes
are the warm, rich earth
while parsley and rosemary
are fresh and green and fragrant.
Chunks of chicken add
more earth and sunshine.
Water,
bubbling up as if from a spring,
mixes and melds
with salt,
with pepper,
with love
sating my soul.
© Catherine Flynn, 2019
Please be sure to visit Rebecca Herzog at Sloth Reads for the Poetry Friday Roundup. Thank you also to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Kelsey, Melanie, and Lanny for creating this community and providing this space for teachers and others to share their stories every day in March and each Tuesday throughout the year. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.
Reading to the Core 
I’m having a hard time keeping up with February poetry prompts, especially reading the comments which often get hidden. So I am glad you posted this poem here. I love how you compare the ingredients of soup to those of a poem.
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love your soup poem! it is both delicious and delightful!
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Oh, how alive this poem is…alive with color and texture and imagery. It’s wonderful. Thanks for posting this poem here. I want a recipe that says, One Hundred Suns Soup!
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Delicious poem! There may be more than a few folks trying to follow your chicken soup poem.
You created wonderful images of all the yummy ingredients.
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My kind of poem. Lyrically delicious!!
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I just commented in our group, Catherine. It’s a wonderful & comforting poem!
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Raising my hand — I’m a recovering recipe-follower as well!
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Yum! I can almost smell it! And I love your blue pot. Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
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It’s natural to start out as a recipe follower and move away from that with time, no? Would you write a poem without reading poetry first? I think not. 🙂 Poetry soup for all!!!
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Catherine, you’ve made soup so beautiful, and I’m craving chicken soup now 🙂
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And your poem tastes even richer the second time around, though good soup usually improves in flavor by the second day. I’m with you Catherine, once we have the basics we can improvise a bit, thanks!
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