STONE SOUP VILLAGE: August 2012

Aug 6, 2012

UNRESTRAINED VORTICES

This is a poem I wrote several years ago. Poetry is subjective, so please feel free to share your own ideas as to what, if anything, you take from this. I'm always open for improvement :-)

UNRESTRAINED VORTICES

Time nurtures a wounded heart

Veiled in its outstretched hand.

A Redbird held in a tender grasp

within the eye of a hurricane

shields its wings from unseen fury,

blowing fairy dust from windowpanes.

It cannot stay in one place too long,

the heart has no choice in the matter.

Rendered in motion by the wind it glides

fluttering gracefully, but now less content.

It took a free-fall once on an awkward chance

now bruised, its trust, virtue, stripped and spent.

It landed here once not so long ago,

you heard it from your kitchen window.

It sang to you from the tall pine tree

while you smiled and sipped your chamomile tea.

It gave you cheer for a moment in time

through happy verse in poetic rhyme.

But aloft is fate to spiral down,

happy rhythms transpose to mundane.

A heart is plunged through a vortex of grief

by impetuous scribblers of judgmental words

who care not why they annihilate.

Damn the Vultures, damn the Crows,

and damn the Mockingbirds!

--Carolyn Scott

THE STORY OF STONE SOUP

(There are many versions of this story. This is my rewrite based on the one I recall)

Once upon a time a poor, weary traveler approached a small, rundown village. It was mid-winter and he was very cold and hungry. He knocked on several doors and asked for food but was told at each hovel that famine had struck the land, everyone was starving and had very little food left to spare. The traveler continued on his way but as he reached the other edge of town, he spotted a large, cast iron pot lying by the wayside. He took it down to the river and washed it out, then filled it with water and a few river stones. He brought the pot back up to the middle of the village square, placed it over a pile of kindling wood and lit a fire beneath it. As the water began to simmer, he smoothed the bark from a small oak limb and began to stir the pot. A villager cautiously approached him and asked what he was doing. "I'm making stone soup," he replied, “but I do wish I had something to season it with.” The villager hungrily eyed the simmering pot of water and stones. "I bet it would taste good with carrots. I have only a sack full left in my cellar but if you allow me a little soup when it's done, I'll toss them in the pot." The traveler agreed so the villager brought back his carrots and tossed them in. Another villager who had been watching from his window came to see what was in the pot. The traveler explained he was making stone soup with carrots. "Mmm, perhaps it would be tastier with a couple of my cabbages. Will you share your soup with my family if I add them?" The traveler heartily agreed and so the villager brought his cabbages and tossed them in the pot. Suddenly, more and more villagers came out to see what was cooking in the pot and offered to add what they had left in their cellars for a portion of the soup. Before long, the large pot was so full of carrots, cabbage, potatoes, corn, beans, barley, beets, garlic, onions, herbs, and even bits of sausage and venison that they needed several more pots to cook in! Before long, they had prepared enough soup to last the rest of winter! The villagers were so grateful to the weary traveler they built him a nice cottage in their village and made him a feather bed with the finest quilts to keep him warm! {The moral: By working together and everyone contributing just a little, a greater good for all is achieved}