Soup
One of the interests we have in common is soup.
Yes soup like the kind she concocts from sweet potatoes and a hint of jalapeno
that makes a little orange sea in its bowl
with an archipelago of eight to ten oyster crackers for her
and twelve to fourteen for me because we do have our differences
and the soup shines silky in flameglow we kindle
for every dinner all year from candles I find at garage sales
and if you are twenty-five rolling your eyes as you read this because you believe
romance is wild grappling of lithe bodies and hang gliding over live volcanoes
and witty repartee over cocktails and more grappling my wish for you
is to live long enough and love long enough
for soup.
Tom Schmidt is a retired humanities professor who began sending out poems to journals in 2018. Fifty published poems and two chapbooks later, he is sufficiently encouraged to keep at it. Tom lives in rural Vermont, where he built a treehouse above his bee-loud glade and often sits there waiting for his Muse.