Like sparkling lights
I love you
like tart cranberry sauce
and chocolate mousse
smooth and sweet
and roast turkey
the day of and days after
and after that’s leftovers
like youthful kisses
I love those leftovers too
the you and me
season after season,
still savory good.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today Sarah asks us to write a response to a poem we’ve read in the past year. Below is the poem I modeled mine after. It appears in jelly roll, a collection of poems by African American poet Kevin Young, winner of the Patterson Poetry Prize and Finalist for the National Book Award. I tried to simulate his form and like him, used a type of music as the title. And yes, that’s my husband and I fifty years ago and obviously, much more recently!
Ragtime
by Kevin Young
Like hot food
I love you
like warm
bread & cold
cuts, butter
sammiches
or, days later, after
Thanksgiving
when I want
whatever’s left
lillian the home poet 
How sweely delicious this is. Love the photos of both of you – still beaming with love & joy after all these years.
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Thank you, Grace. Love of my life still after all these years.
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Oh, Lill, this is beautiful, such a great tribute to the poem, and your marriage!
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Thank you, Sarah. This was interesting and challenging for me to follow the form of another poem. Not how I usually write…especially the 2-line stanzas. But that’s what dVerse is so often…a chance to not only express ourselves but to be challenged in our writing. Glad you enjoyed this one!
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Lovely ❤️
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Oh my heart this is incredibly beautiful, Lillian! 😀 Love the photographs of you too, smiling and beaming at each other. A gem of a poem too! 💝💝💝
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Thank you, Sanaa. I was surprised when I looked at the photo on the right to find how similar it was in positioning etc to our wedding photo 🙂 Kind of fun!
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Oh, really well done, Lillian. I’m so glad that you included your inspirational poem also.
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So glad you liked it. I figured I’d better include the poem that inspired this one….as the form of 2 lines to a stanzas is so completely different than the way I write…as is very little punctuation. I enjoyed the prompt and it was fun to use the two photos as well.
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I look forward to working with this prompt. I just hope there’s enough time to produce something.
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Awww 🥰
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Nicely done, Lillian, and I love the “before” and “after 50” photos. Wonderful to have someone to share a life with and still be smiling ❤ ❤
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So glad you enjoyed the poem and the photos. Oh yes….the love of my life and I’ve often said since last March when this Covid made us all recluses, so glad I married my best friend (and a good cook!).
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🙂 ❤
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Beautiful love!
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Thank you!
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Congrats, great match of poems and life-partner!
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Thank you! I’ve often said over these Covid months of seclusion, I’m so glad I married my best friend! 🙂
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I’m sure that is the crucial point for lifelong relationships 🙂
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I’m with the chocolate mousse
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Hah! I make Julia Child’s recipe every year….it just melts in your mouth! It’s so good and so tempting when we have some leftover….that I deliberately only make it once a year! 🙂
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Such a beautiful portrayal of what a marriage can be, and all too seldom is. You are blessed.
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Thankful for every day.
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Delightful Lillian, and I love the photos of you two!
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Awww 🥰
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Delicious, wonderful, heartfelt and bang on for duplicating the feel and style of your chosen poem.
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Just lovely, Lillian, and beautiful photographs which celebrate your love. I like the succinct, clipped style of both poems.
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Thank you, Lill, for introducing me to Kevin Young, a poet I had not heard of. You have successfully simulated his form and title. You had my mouth watering with the ‘tart cranberry sauce and chocolate mousse’! I especially love the lines:
‘like youthful kisses
I love those leftovers too’.
A delicious portrait of a relationship ‘season after season, still savory good’. And I love the photos!
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What Glenn said. You wrote a mirror-image of the original poem, with your personal touch.
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This was and excellent piece and an engaging read Lillian — well written. Happy & Healthy New Year to you and yours. Here’s to writing wonderful poetry in 2021.
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So joyous and lovely!
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