And Here We Are …

… activists, writers, thinkers, doers, everyday people who know in our hearts that a better world is possible, determined to keep doing our part (whatever that may be) to make it happen. Let’s just give ourselves a minute to take a deep breath together as this historic day unfolds.

Today there is nowhere to be but where we are.  I am making a pot of tea and a big pot of soup as I open my home to friends and neighbors who, like me, are wanting comfort food and camaraderie. The TV is on, but muted with closed captioning, and there are board games on the table. This day will unfold as it will and tomorrow the sun will rise again … a day that will reflect, in the words of Amanda Gorman, the audacity of our hope & the vitality of our vote.

If it’s poetry on the page that you appreciate, I invite you to try this.

Election
By Alfred K. LaMotte

I voted.
I voted for the rainbow.
I voted for the cry of a loon.
I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.
I voted for a singing brook that sparkles
under a North Dakota bean field.
I voted for salty air through which the whimbrel flies
South along the shores of two continents.
I voted for melting snow that returns to the wellspring
of darkness, where the sky is born from the earth.
I voted for daemonic mushrooms in the loam,
and the old democracy of worms.
I voted for the wordless treaty that cannot be broken
by white men or brown, because it is made of star semen,
thistle sap, hieroglyphs of the weevil in prairie oak.
I voted for the local, the small, the brim
that does not spill over, the abolition of waste,
the luxury of enough.
I voted for the commonwealth of the ancient forest,
a larva for every beak, a wing-tinted flower
for every moth’s disguise, a well-fed mammal’s corpse
for every colony of maggots.
I voted for open borders between death and birth.
I voted on the ballot of a fallen leaf of sycamore
that cannot be erased, for it becomes the dust and rain,
and then a tree again.
I voted for more fallow time to cultivate wild flowers,
more recess in schools to cultivate play,
more leisure, tax free, more space between days.
I voted to increase the profit of evening silence
and the price of a thrush song.
I voted for ten million stars in your next inhalation.

And if it’s music that you crave, I hope this will help.

Being, as I am, from hearty peasant stock, comfort often comes in a soup bowl. So, if it’s a colorful, aromatic soup recipe you’re missing, how about trying this Fall favorite, Curried Pumpkin Apple Onion, from my book All In The Soup Together … Four Seasons of Recipes & Reflections.

Until next time, then, let’s share a cup of tea or bowl of soup with a friend, sing, read a little poetry, and hold each other close …

Sulima