Looking Nostalgic

This is the last entry for National Poetry Month. I’ve completed the Super Poetry Challenge and claim bragging rights by using the Bonus prompt – write a poem using the words basil, ink, tub, bread, candle and lace! Hope you enjoy this one!

She can barely read the ink
On the card, questions the use of basil
In a recipe for potato bread
All the while the bread in the tub
Rises like smoke from a candle
And she rolls up sleeves trimmed with lace

Too late she regrets the choice of lace
While baking as she smudges ink
On sleeves now sooty as a candle
Wick, and the poor basil
Plant has sacrificed to the dough in the tub
That once baked will be bread

She remembers her mother’s bread
Loses track of time fingering the lace
As the dough doubles in the tub
She remembers to punch it down leaving ink
On the dough and coming away with basil
Bits on her knuckles and decides to light a candle

She dims the lights to see the candle
Better inhaling the aroma of bread
Dough tinged with the sharp smell of basil
She kneads the dough and it sticks in the lace
On her sleeves, at least she washed the ink
From her hands as she washed the tub

She didn’t take the time to dry the tub
The water spots reflected the light of the candle
Over come with sadness her tears fell and the ink
On that long ago written recipe for potato bread
Started to run as she quickly blotted it with a lace
Cuff flecked with chopped basil

Forming the loaves, a single leaf of basil
Adorned the top, resting as she stowed the tub
Scrubbed at the dirty sleeve lace
Blew out the candle
And placed the pans into the oven to become bread
Which would hopefully be white despite the ink

Her mother’s memory in fresh basil and scented candle
Her mother’s mixing tub and her secret recipe for bread
Made her happy even with ruined lace from the ink

I know this is long but I felt that I needed to write a sestina for the sake of nostalgia. You see many years ago on Xanga, a poetry friend challenged me to write a sestina. I struggled mightily. It got to the point that I developed a strong phobia to this particular form. She would write sestinas that would send me into literary raptures. I was baffled at how she could take 6 random words and weave a wonderful story within a poem and not only make it flow but make it live and breathe. So in honor of Sandra (aka Harpo’sMark aka BianchiStreet) I bit the bullet and wrote a sestina and I didn’t even stutter or break out in hives!!