Two poems this week from Garrison Keillor's writers almanac caught my eye.


Garrison Keillors Writer's Almanac

Poem: "Knoxville, Tennessee" by Nikki Giovanni.
Knoxville, Tennessee

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic
and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep

Poem: "Baby Girl Found" by Francette Cerulli, from The Spirits Need To Eat.

Baby Girl Found

He found her wrapped in a brown towel
Beside the highway department dumpster.
She was so cold she was blue, so new
her umbilical stump still drooped softly
from her belly like the limp stem
of some fantastic fruit.

He picked her up in his huge gloved
highway department hands and
carried her to his truck. Inside the cab
he turned on the light, peeled the damp towel
from her body and held her
under the blast of the truck heater.

Giant midwife bent over her in the frozen morning,
He watched for the smallest sign.
It was her second birth.