peeps

*“Peeps” by Leigh-Anne Eagerton (oil on panel).*

PEEPS 
by Judy Fort Brenneman

If Peeps are in the store, can Spring be far behind?
My hand, reverent, traces the crackle of cellophane
That shelters conjoined confections.
Soft shapes in bright colors—
Yellow, pink, and this year, blue—
(Yellow is the best, anyone could tell you.)
Colors of spring more true than the purple crocus
Frozen in its bulb under the snowbank at the end of the drive.

My hand plucks them like seed packets.
One, two, three four five.
Odd numbers are best—no one notices
If you eat the odd one before you get home.

The register beeps the red total.
The clerk says leave them out overnight
In the open, without cellophane;
That's the best way, she smiles.
I smile back; who am I to tell her she's wrong?
Naked Peeps are soon as hard and dry as sun-baked dirt
At the end of August.

My five small packs nestle in the sack
Like boxes of tulips minus the stems.
My thumb punches through the cellophane of the one on top—
Better than any groundhog's shadow,
More pure than the first robin's song,
A promise of pollen shakes loose with sugar spilled on my lap.
I pull the yellow blossoms apart,
And eat Spring.

~ Copyright © 2023 Judy Fort Brenneman as posted at Your Daily Poem.

The thing about Peeps is that you either love ’em or hate ’em. Kind of like candy corn at Halloween, Peeps are undoubtedly divisive.

Made of sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, food coloring, carnauba wax and a preservative, Peeps aren’t exactly the healthiest treat. Yet for many of us, it’s all about the nostalgia — memories of childhood Easter baskets, debating over which color or shape is best, whether to eat them fresh or stale.

What can I say? I’ve always liked marshmallow: chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies, mini mallows in cocoa, s’mores. ‘Nuff (or should I say ‘fluff’) said. 😀

Yes, eating straight sugar is bad, but once a year, I don’t mind throwing caution to the wind. Note I said “once a year,” because those orange Halloween pumpkin Peeps or green Christmas tree ones are just wrong. Everyone knows Halloween = chocolate, and Christmas = cookies. Right? Some things, after all, are sacred.

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“The house light turns everything golden, and even though we know what’s coming, the next act, we start to believe we can stay here forever in the amber spotlight, that night’s black velvet curtain will never fall.” (“Vaudeville” by Barbara Crooker)

Barbara Crooker’s latest poetry book, Gold (Cascade Books, 2013) has been a godsend these last few months.

As I try to navigate the failing health of my parents and the dread of impending loss, Barbara’s poems have come to the rescue again and again — offering comfort, hope, and affirmation. Gold focuses on the life-altering experience of losing one’s mother; Barbara recounts her mother’s long illness, her death, and the aftermath of coping with grief.

These deeply felt, finely wrought lyric-narrative poems are sad but never maudlin or depressing, personal yet universal, with stirring emotional truths that pierce the heart.

I love how she shines an incandescent light on the fragility and strength of the mother-daughter relationship, inviting us into those tender moments of grace where she is child-turned-caregiver, the child yet asking, “How can she be gone?”

Nana's 90 023crop — Barbara with her mother Isabelle on her 90th birthday, two months before she passed away.

If you’re already a fan of Barbara’s work, you’ll bask once again in her radiant images and the beautiful cadences of every line. Autumn sets the stage for this eloquent elegiac rumination echoing Frost’s, “Nothing gold can stay.”

The collection also includes poems about Ireland, aging and the body, the difficulties and joys of love in long-term marriages, the loss of friends, and several ekphrastic poems on paintings by Gorky, Manet, Matisse, O’Keeffe and others.

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