Sara Fryd was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and spent the first five years of her life in an American refugee camp near Munich, Germany. She moved with her family to the United States in 1951, arriving in New Orleans and ultimately settling in Phoenix. Sara started writing on March 25, 1991, and she hasn’t stopped since. You will be thankful for that once you’ve read her poems. Read her blog to learn more about Sara, her writing, and her upcoming book, Little Girls and Purple Cats. Read this poem and feel like you’re there with Sara about to devour a delicacy.
Joy Rising
By Sara Fryd
She made sponge cake
Dough rising
Like joy in the afternoon
With smells of flour, eggs, sugar
Lemons, oranges
Apple cake always with cinnamon
Honey, raisins, nuts, and vanilla.
And luscious potato kugel
With onions chopped so fine they were invisible.
There was always food for strangers or pets
I would bring home.
Travels of a teenage soul
Or college student with compassion
For the lost and lonely.
If we could have stayed
Little girl and wiser Mother
It might have been enough
To keep us whole, connected.
Joined at the hip was never to be
Not for us
Though on cold wintry days
With snow weighing down limbs
Before sunrise,
I still open doors on cupboards
Gently, very gently.
Whispering through my kitchen
Remembering joy rising
Upside down on Coca-Cola bottles
On sunny, lazy Arizona afternoons.
i love the transition to the teenage soul line..and why am i so hungry now? 🙂
I love the images — kitchen, love, joy. And I loved hearing you read it on Annmarie’s blogtalk radio show.
Loved your great poem. Took me back to my mother’s kitchen and to her baking pies. And my love for her. Thanks.