She was a bookworm of the most finicky kind
reading every day with a book always in reach
at the thrifty store the books were all consigned
she rebuffed discriminately with slow impeach
and rebuked all books that weren't a food find
She ravaged books about cakes & pate de foie gras
buttered tarts, angel hair, and little canape things
books about how to bake fish and how to fry bass
like a true galloping gourmet she would bring
the recipes home, then make them sing...
When winter came she'd sit like a chow hound
and copy recipes into her little red book
feeling lucky for the precious books she found
Pillaging the remnants with eyes sharp as a rook
she made the kitchen her haven, and fair ground
Her recipe for lava chocolate soufflé had charm
and her English toffee lollies were never fickle
she bought her eggs fresh from the dairy farm
and when she made cucumber and gin popsicles,
you could lick to hearts content they do no harm .
March 12, 2019
Contest Name: The Book Worm
Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
Kaleidoscopic leaf cover
shimmers in the September sun
casting shadowy and sunlit
shifting pools of darkness and light
on a multicolored graveyard.
Sweet decaying scents permeate
the early autumn environs
while yellow oxeye sunflowers
sway to an autumnal zephyr
that whispers enchanting verses
softly throughout the trees.
********
Never could a master artist
paint like a poet paints with words.
What subtle hues could he employ
to capture a whispering wind,
the sweetness of decaying leaves,
inconsistencies of shadows?
These intangibles are captured
with colors of imagery
that are discriminately mixed
and depicted where the painter
ruefully and completely fails,
affixed to inanimateness
whereas, the poet pens movement
and complexion into his work.