Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Childhood Thoughts (PoetryCUBED)

Coming from an Italian family, tomatoes were always a treat. My Nonnie would buy bushels of juicy, ripe tomatoes and make tasty pasta sauce, pizza, and salads. Every Sunday, I would stand on my tiptoes to dip my bread or meatball into the sauce. The hearty, lip-smacking taste always delighted me. 

I spent each summer with my Nonnie learning how to enjoy the ordinary routines of life. She taught me how to wash clothes with her old-fashioned wringer washer and dry our wash on a clothesline. When older, I learned the art of making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes. I added salt, pepper, fresh garlic, and parsley while stirring the squishy mixture. To this day, I love the smell of tomatoes sauce on top of a plate of spaghetti. 

I cherish the time I spent with my Nonnie learning how to cook and bake. While there were no dogs in our family or neighborhood, my one precious little cat, Frankie Boy, was my 4-year-old friend until he jumped out of my hands and was hit by a car. It is amazing to me how photo prompts can bring back memories long forgotten?

There is one last memory, the question that I always remember. Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Do you know the answer? Do you remember the Encylopedia Brittanica? It was a favorite research tool in my K-8 elementary school. I always found the best information between the pages. You can find the answer to my probing question here.

licking good
tasty treat
tomatoes

all-season
tongue-slurping
heart love

taste, wink, smile-
childhood thoughts
in a jar
©CV, 2022, Tricube

😉

Long-ago memories flowed from three photo prompts offered by poet-author Matt Forrest Esenwine in his National Poetry Month challenge,
PoetryCUBED Contest.

Check out the following rules Matt offers. 
Perhaps, you will be interested in offering your own poem.


  • Use the 3 images ("cubed") above as inspiration to write a poem.
  • The poem can be any form, any number of lines, rhyming or not. 
  • The only hitch is that you need to include a reference to all three images in the poem – either via concrete imagery or something more abstract.

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for a meeting place on Slice of Life Tuesday to connect with a community of reflective writers.



8 comments:

  1. Love your response to the challenge, Carol! (especially those "childhood thoughts in a jar") I'll be sure to share this on my blog this month and enter you in the drawing!

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    1. Matt, thanks for the response to the PoetryCUBED contest. I did not count how long it too me but it was a short amount of time. I really liked this challenge.

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  2. What a lovely connection of memories and poetry.

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    1. Thank you for your comment, Terje. I love you blue anemones and hope to share it in my Poetrylicious Gallery.

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  3. Carol. Love the memories. Sounds like your Nonnie was a real mentor. I grew up in a Slavic (grandparents) Lithuanian (mother) household so our food consisted of things like halupki, haluski, and bleenies. No one in our family ever made homemade tomato sauce. I am sure it tastes nothing like Ragu or Prego.

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    1. Bob, your information about your past is so interesting and such a different type of food than what I ate. I have tried some Polish food but never heard the titles of the foods you mentioned. It is so much fun learning about different cultures.

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  4. Love the memories, Carol, feels like my childhood, too, that wringer washer we had to watch out for! And your poems fits the pics with style! Matt's challenge is fun!

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    1. Thanks for reading my PoetryCUBED offering, Linda. The wringer washer is such a vibrant image in my head. I really was intrigued by it and wanted to turn the handle. It was a difficult task though.

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