Stone Soup is from Quattro Books (c) 2014
As its title suggests, this book is inspired by the old poetic folktale in which three travellers enter a village and open the minds and hearts of the townspeople by inviting them to contribute whatever they can to a simple meal that begins with a stone: a gesture that dispels fear, forges connections, and nourishes the entire community.
Reviews:
In Stone Soup an accomplished poet shares her love for the world. Kate Marshall Flaherty’s fine poems travel through a variety of cultures, landscapes, beliefs, though always coming back to home and family. One poem at a time, one stone at a time, she creates a rich work, grounded in affection for the here and now, but always reaching toward the spiritual. – Elizabeth Greene
Kate Marshall-Flaherty is the poet of the Luminous. With her poems we are always present on both sides of the membrane simultaneously – profoundly embodied, yet connected to Spirit and Mystery at the same time… Her pleasure in the playfulness of language is evident in this book, as always, and so is her gift for both observing and noting the emotional resonance of concrete “things”. – Sue Reynolds
Sample Poems from Stone Soup
Dig
Children’s Site at the ROM
Locky’s hair. Still blonde as beach,
drips into the huge box.
Goggles arc his brow.
He is lost–
In the grit-sand-shovel-brush-away-inspection
of it all; blowing dry earth
from bone, exposing ribbed ridges,
sweeping grit from grooves in vertebrae.
He goes deep,
concentrates with every cell,
crawls over the lip of the sandbox
Into ancient sight,
gets right back to bedrock
and into fossils.
He doesn’t read
the “keep out” sign,
lost as he is
in history’s hairline fissures,
hieroglyphs
and mysterious mounds.
Deep in dirt
and the now
absorbed in desert dust
he becomes
the dig.
A Mouse’s Prayer
O constant moon,
you illuminate my tracks,
almost imperceptible
atop this thin blanket
of ice-crusted snow.
May you hide my scribblings
and nibbles
in shadowy corners,
and reveal for my shiny eyes
pearls of hard corn, crumbs
and paper boxes of flakes
I can gnaw holiness into.
Send a beam slantwise
into the farm window,
drench the dresser drawer’s raggy nest
of tattered flannel
where my babes lie opaque
in woolen scraps;
where my warm lima beans
nestle together dreaming
six-small-parts-into-one
big mouse dream
of nut butters
and flecks of sharp cheddar.
I will scurry my prayer
across the stone mantel
beneath the clock:
My blessings on all cracks
and cubbyholes,
my thanks for all things small
and with seeds,
my wish for protection
from owl eyes and traps,
and things with lids.
O moon, you see me
when others do not,
you know my brown fur’s sheen,
and you reflect for me
my own great smallness
in your immensely
dark and speckled sky.