Autumn Means Soup

I went to several workshop discussions at Winter Wheat. The most amazing, though, was a poetry-based writing workshop which explored visual imagery as a prompt for writing. During part of the workshop, the facilitators handed out abstract black and white images. I loved how my subconscious was drawn to create meaning from meaningless black and white swirls. The image I fixated on was a circle. It reminded me of our dented, beat-up tea pot or a deep pot of soup. During the writing, here's roughly what I wrote based on an abstract image:

I tell him, "It's soup season."

He says, "There's a soup season?" a bit startled like he was unaware that we were supposed to celebrate a national holiday.

I put the garden to bed in November, poke little thumb-shaped nubbins of garlic into the deep, brown earth. It smells like moldy leaves, and the sun glows with a peculiar slant. I wonder, where do the earthworms go in December when the earth is hard like stone?

I take the teapot out of the cupboard. Like so many of our kitchen things, it has outlived it's original owner, but the stainless steel reflects us. In January, as the trees get brittle and grayer than the sky, my life feels narrow. I make Chamomile tea every night. I stare into the tea pot's chrome, the shiny glare, and try to imagine a world outside this bleakness. Beyond us. Beyond this kitchen with the stained, green striped dish towel. The kitchen is sunny, but cold. Crystals of ice like trapped, lost snowflakes coat the windowpanes. The tea kettle is an orb, a globe. It contains warm, rotund comfort.



As winter approaches, I find myself drawn to soup and tea. Liquid warmth that my very pores can soak up. Soon I'll tell you about all the fabulous soups I've been subsisting off of these past few weeks. But you tell me, what foods do you crave when it gets cold?