pineapple slices

#15 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2011

Hello my little chickies!

Just in time for Easter weekend, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater and her three children have brought some eggs to our poetry feast! They just happen to live at Heart Rock Farm, set on a sprawling 24 acres up in Holland, New York, where they cavort with Icelandic sheep, rabbits, cats, a dog, and of course, chickens.

*L to R: Hope, Amy, Georgia and Henry VanDerwater with eggs used in today’s recipe.*

In this season of growth and renewal, it’s good to celebrate life, ponder its mysteries, cherish its fleeting moments, and hold our loved ones close. Amy enjoys growing meaningful words and thoughts at her Poem Farm, cultivating the seeds of promising ideas, nurturing them as they blossom into words, and then sending them off into the big wide world. Whether you’re hatching a brand new idea or gazing upon the faces of your biological offspring with wonder and awe, there’s no better way to sing of these sweet miracles than with a poem.

Amy: I wrote this poem in 2000, the year our third child, Henry, was born. That same year, Mark’s paternal grandmother died. Grandma’s recipe for “Pineapple Slices” carries on, as do so many memories of her strength and goodness. Watching Hope, Georgia, and Henry grow up, I realize how quickly this cycle circles ’round, how swift is the time between egg and mother bird.

MOTHER BIRD’S LULLABY
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Someday
you’ll be
grown up birds.
You’ll fly
to far-off places.
And I will keep
this memory
of your tiny
feathered faces.

Someday
you’ll be
grown up birds.
You’ll do
grown up bird things.
And I will keep
this place for you
right here
beneath my wings.

So lovely! And there’s nothing I love more than hearing about a family recipe that’s flavored with fond memories and becomes a precious legacy for succeeding generations. Amy wrote about Grandma VanDerwater’s famous Pineapple Slices (or “cake”) in this funny, charming essay/commentary for WBFO/National Public Radio. Seems when she was dating her husband-to-be, Mark, she learned “the cake” would undeniably figure in their future together.

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