I’ve moved the picnic table into the shade of the weeping birch in the back yard of my childhood home, and the Poetry Sisters are arriving with yummy offerings for today’s pot luck.
Nope. While I DID grow up on the arid high plains of eastern Colorado, that’s WAY too dry. Let’s try again.
Right tree, wrong size of lawn. Maybe the third time will be the charm?
Close enough! Let’s get this party started!
Tricia arrives carefully balancing the dish her mom made and took to church every week for years.
Liz is bringing a family recipe as well – her grandmother’s strawberry rhubarb kuchen.
Sara, bless her, is providing the salty goodness that will balance the sweets – a lowly but always welcome bag of chips.
Tanita‘s offering is a little bit wobbly — Ms. Sandy McMahon’s red jello salad.
Laura sent some flowers for the table. She won’t be joining us with a poem this week.
More than any other season, Summer, to me, is a taste: fat green grapes at swim meets, nectarine juice running down my chin, warm cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, fresh garden green beans cooked with a ham hock and potatoes, sliced garden cucumbers tossed in vinegar and sugar, butterscotch dip cones from DQ…but what I finally chose for my poem was Three Bean Salad.*
I’m going to do the roundup “old-school” this week. Leave your link and a brief description of your post in the comments and I’ll add your links to today’s potluck.
MAIN DISHES
Susan is in with a link to Eve L. Ewing’s poem “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store” at Chicken Spaghetti.
Robyn, at Life on the Deckle Edge, is sharing a couple of new Americana bookmarks and Whitman’s classic, “I Hear America Singing.
Tabatha has an original poem today at The Opposite of Indifference.
Tracey interviews Jone about TILT! at Tangles and Tails.
SIDES
This week Jama is sharing Kim Dower’s poem “How to Shop for a Poet” with thoughts about her “ideal” poet at Jama’s Alphabet Soup.
Cathy is bringing a whole carousel of offerings to the picnic at Cathy Stenquist!
Amy, at The Poem Farm, brings us this delicious side dish all the way from Utah!
Let’s serve Margaret’s Pádraig Pantoum alongside a serving of funeral potatoes from Tricia’s poem (see above.) Margaret’s pantoum is at Reflections on the Teche.
DESSERTS
Let’s put some candles on the birthday cake for Michelle at More Art 4 All! Today is her birthday and she’s written a Golden Shovel in celebration.
Jone’s sharing “her” fourth grader (in the class where she was subbing) sweet “I Am” poems at Jone Rush MacCulloch.
Carol offers up a plate of springtime thoughts, peonies before and after the rain, through nature photography, digital art, and a Golden Hinge poem at Beyond LiteracyLink.
Irene treats us to the sweetness of letter writing and snail mail at Live Your Poem. (After lunch, let’s all sit down and write a few notes!)
DRINKS
Quench your thirst for all things birds with Jan at Bookseedstudio!
AFTER LUNCH ENTERTAINMENT
Jane, at Rain City Librarian, wrote about…a sea slug! A ridiculously adorable, itty bitty little sea slug that looks like a cartoon character.
Linda wrote a Pádraig Ó Tuama-ish pantoum this week. Find her on Substack at Another Word Edgewise.
Alan shares the simple, yet beguiling ‘Stornello’ -a traditonal Italian tercet – at Poetry Pizzazz.
Rose is celebrating an almost-milestone anniversary and offering a bit of entertainment with words and music at Imagine the Possibilities.
Every good picnic has at least one dog, sniffing under the table for dropped goodies. Denise, at Dare to Care, brings us and entire pack of Good Dogs in the form of études (a form to play with while our lunch settles).
Mona has a project for us after lunch is finished — let’s all go forth and put up poetry boxes! She has the details and a concrete poem at Mona Voelkel.
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
The call for roundup hosts for July – December 2026 can be found here.
All images in today’s post are via Unsplash, with the exception of the jello salad, which is Creative Commons via Flickr.
*recipe can be found in the comments
A(nother) Year of Reading 