My grandparent’s busy kitchen

 

Grandpa, grandma, my brother, and me

 Adults talked and children listened in my
grandparent’s kitchen.  We learned through 
watching and following directions—from how to
wash potatoes, cut carrots, peel tomatoes,
and serve fruit, to how to make
a white sauce, prepare horse chestnuts, and
roll pie crusts.  Soups, stews, and casseroles followed.
 
Grandpa was the bread maker.  I watched
him kneed the ingredients together,
including letting the dough rest and rise,
and again, after punching it down and dividing
for the pans, and then the smell of bread baking,
and thick rich slices buttered, warm and sweet.
He was also the butcher who turned goats
and chickens into meat.  That, I didn’t watch.
 
On holidays, family gathered to eat
in the dining room.  First grandma and
I cleared the vast table: her students’ art
to grade, newspapers and mail to read,
photographs and slides to sort, and ceramic
tiles to cut for her mosaics.  She answered
my questions gently as we prepared a festive
table with good China, glasses, and silver
for a feast that always tasted like love.

 

For Sherry's prompt "Grandma's Kitchen" at What's Going On? 

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Birth Day

 

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I have a birthday
in June, so celebration
seems right and proper.
Over seventy
now, I shrink and bend into
a sitting position.
How can I not?  This
is how I spent my life, bent
over books and notebooks:
writing to think, to
open opportunities
for other thinkers.
 
I’m exercising now,
using my words in freedom’s
causes, rights to belong,
to speak and to build
homes in the U S of A.
It’s what we offer.
Any other way
we try to transform into
freedom from fear.
 
Today my mind moves
through memory into the
forests I have known,
where trees and boulders
that lent me their strength and peace
buoy me up still.
Leaves and needles
brush the dust of retirement
off my bent body.
And I stand taller.
Without the weight of tiredness,
I celebrate June.

 For my prompt "Birthday" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

When the balance breaks

 

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When I think of the violence the few
men and women do as our world’s leaders,
I am certain all the harm to the earth
is perpetrated by the human race.
 
And that may be.  But when I think of the
multitudes of humans who live without
causing harm and who act to heal, I know
that more love than evil surrounds the earth.
 
So far the balance holds, and is not
easily broken by daily outrage
and threats by weapons of mass destruction,
genocide, oil spills, and false alarms.
 
Aware of the danger, we work and pray
that when the balance breaks, peace is the way.

For Sumana's prompt "Contradictions" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

 

Do you hear the people sing?

 

Photo by Jonn Leffmann, 2014, Source

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry folks?
Bringing food to children who
should not be starved again.
It’s the lesson of your heart
that genocide is wrong,
and Gazans should exist
when tomorrow comes
 
Will you join in our movement?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
It’s not antisemitism
to let innocent Gazans breathe.
 
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry peoples?
Will you give what you can give
To feed a land of starving souls?
It’s the lesson of our hearts
That genocide is wrong!
We want the bombs to stop
When tomorrow comes!
 
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song in harmony?
Songs of Gazans and Israelis
who want to live safe and free.
Americans join in the harmony,
wishing to ditch governments
that disempower you and me
from ridding earth of armaments,
from ending the killing spree.
 
Will you join in our movement?
Will you act compassionately?
First we’ll feed the many starving
then build the world we long to see.

For Mary's prompt "Do You Hear the People Sing?" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Another poem:  There will be singing

There will be song at the end of the day
Once more, we’ll hear birds sing and children play.
 
Now between the bombs it is too quiet.
We wait, but know there will be no let up.
 
How can we tell birds and living children
Why we won’t, don’t—and can’t—stop bombardments?
 
But we will sing the children’s favorite songs
and write new ones to tell our history.                

 

There will be new songs at the start of day.
We’ll hear birds sing again and children play.

 

Rhymes with Coup

 
Alarmed by the coup we are living in,
I strap down at home and wait for the pinch
of lift-off and inevitable crash.
There is no harbor inside.  Inch by inch
 
we are priced out of safety by tariffs
and deportations.  Roofs fall and windows
blow out, but FEMA no longer assists
in times of nature’s disasters.  Although
 
now is an un-natural disaster
made for those afraid to look the coup in
the eyes and see its similarity
to fascist regimes and to genocides. 
 
Could stay-ins have made a difference in
Nazi Germany had they sniffed the air?
What could end America's racism? 
What could make a difference in Gaza? 
 
What could get me to unstrap and to walk
further than the end of my own driveway?
I open the way, but let a stand of
magnolia trees deflect my purpose.
 
Truth is, any beauty could keep me from
engaging in large issues of my time.
I strap down at home fearing the coup has
won, and spend days looking for words that rhyme. 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast

Seeing Red

 

 

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Red is striking as a stripe through a rug,
woven or tufted tightly, thin or wide.
But not as blood seeping through a white shirt
or bandage held tightly against wounded pride.
 
Red is pretty as petals on roses,
fake or real, or floating in a river.
But not when shot through the eyes of sleepless
and starving children waiting for succor.
 
Red is luscious as silk costumes and shawls
wrapped around lithe bodies and chilled shoulders.
But not as fire and gun burns on arms that
reluctantly use them as ordered.
 
Let red be nature’s innocent color,
not experienced as wartime décor.

 For Sherry's prompt "THIS IS NO TIME TO MAKE THINGS PRETTY" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright.

© 2025 Susan L. Chast