Sarah Sadie
Pumpkin Muffins
The kids and the gods all wait for me to wake up to myself.
One set wants pumpkin muffins, the other for me to realize
I’ve been insisting on the wrong trajectory for years.
Then the coffee kicks in and I learn that’s not true.
The gods would be happy with muffins, they say, and the kids
want me to be happy, to remember how to play.
The morning cracks open to mousetraps and furnaces,
the ditch fills with blossoming chicory, and I set
the timer again like a boundary, a far horizon.
Nutmeg and baking powder, what crucial creation
opens this can of pumpkin and oils the tins?
What kind of world? The first one tested bitter
with too much spice and not enough sugar, I worried,
but the kids said they were fine and smiling boarded the bus.
Sarah Sadie (Sarah Busse) blogs at Sermons from the Mound, on the pagan channel at patheos.com. Also an editor (www.cowfeatherpress.org), her poetry received the Wisconsin Fellowship Of Poets’ Chapbook Prize, the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker and Posner Prizes, and a Pushcart Prize. Her collection, Somewhere Piano, was published in 2012 by Mayapple Press. She has published a children's picture book (Banjo Granny, Houghton Mifflin) and is at work on two more. She teaches at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Workshop and online at the Loft. One of two Poets Laureate (2012-2016) of Madison, she lives with her husband and children and writes #sexyvoterhaiku.
Pumpkin Muffins
The kids and the gods all wait for me to wake up to myself.
One set wants pumpkin muffins, the other for me to realize
I’ve been insisting on the wrong trajectory for years.
Then the coffee kicks in and I learn that’s not true.
The gods would be happy with muffins, they say, and the kids
want me to be happy, to remember how to play.
The morning cracks open to mousetraps and furnaces,
the ditch fills with blossoming chicory, and I set
the timer again like a boundary, a far horizon.
Nutmeg and baking powder, what crucial creation
opens this can of pumpkin and oils the tins?
What kind of world? The first one tested bitter
with too much spice and not enough sugar, I worried,
but the kids said they were fine and smiling boarded the bus.
Sarah Sadie (Sarah Busse) blogs at Sermons from the Mound, on the pagan channel at patheos.com. Also an editor (www.cowfeatherpress.org), her poetry received the Wisconsin Fellowship Of Poets’ Chapbook Prize, the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker and Posner Prizes, and a Pushcart Prize. Her collection, Somewhere Piano, was published in 2012 by Mayapple Press. She has published a children's picture book (Banjo Granny, Houghton Mifflin) and is at work on two more. She teaches at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Workshop and online at the Loft. One of two Poets Laureate (2012-2016) of Madison, she lives with her husband and children and writes #sexyvoterhaiku.