This National Poetry Month(NPM), I am writing and sharing original poems about food, family and feasts. Sundays will be a day to reshare a poem from the past. A list of links to previous poems is HERE.
This is from my 2015 National Poetry Month writings.
Definition: a dark substance that is made from the beans of a tropical plant and that is used to flavor food. Vanilla is from a type of orchid grown in Mexico.
What Does Vanilla Know?
It feels the roughness of the farmers’ hands as they pick the pods.
It feels the heat from the tropical sun.
It anticipates the curing process.
What does vanilla know?
It knows the history of the Aztecs.
It smells of delicacy and calmness
It blackens as it sweats.
© 2015 Jone Rush MacCulloch all rights reserved
2020 Progressive Poem Update:
Sunday seems like a good day to peek in on how the 2020 Progressive Poem is unfolding.
TabatDani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters has today’s lines.
2020 Progressive Poem
1 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
6 Kay McGriff at https://kaymcgriff.edublogs.org/
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
Irene Latham who began this poem project back in 2012, has handed it over to Margaret Simon to organize. I am so grateful to both Irene and Margaret for this wonderful April collaboration to kick of National Poetry Month.
Each day in April a different poet will add a line to this poem begun here today. No one knows where it will go or how it will get there, but it always gets there beautifully!
Jone Rush MacCulloch 
Oh, I love vanilla and only bake with real organic vanilla, but I never knew it came from a orchid. Thank you for that and your beautiful details in your poem, which I love! I love your form starting the first two lines with, it feels, your question, your answer, and continuing with starting the lines with, it. Great use of senses!