A Poem a Day (654): NaPoWriMo Day 23 - Gingerbread

 
Day 23 
 
Prompt: we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/ Superman.  www.napowrimo.net
 
I wrote the first draft of this today in a pub with a small glass of Merlot by the sea. It's dedicated to my own personal superhero.

 
Gingerbread
 
It’s the smell of gingerbread rising,
fruity, tart, malty. A scent I know well.
It beckons me to follow, unseen,
like a misty finger signalling,
summoning me to do its bidding.
Dough rising from a hard, biscuit base.
It’s the smell I’ll remember decades on
when I am old and she is gone.
 
I don’t know how to make gingerbread,
but I know how it makes me feel,
taking me back to much simpler times
when my hands barely reached the table,
my eyes fixed on the china mixing bowl,
imagining what it would taste like,
if only my tiptoed me could reach it.
If I was lucky, I’d get a lick of the spoon.
 
Now, I think of all the things out of reach,
the times I was just too far from home
to relate the new crisis – the failed romance,
the lost job, endless soul-searching, the always
feeling you’re not quite good enough,
but she was always waiting there,
forever at the end of the telephone.
 
Sometimes she’d say pull up your big knickers
and just get on with it, to let things go.
She was always willing to offer her shield,
always ready to drop everything and listen,
because that is what a superhero really is,
when you’re afraid and you’re far from home.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 23, 2024