By Brittany Baldwin
In the morning I walk the dog through the orchard in the
mist. This is my time alone before I head off to work. Between the trees I
watch for poems.
During the commute I listen to poetry, stories, news or
music. I write down ideas that come from watching the farms pass. The man on
his riding mower spreading chemical over his perfect lawn that is big enough to
grow enough food to feed his neighbors and himself for a year. But he wants his
country home to have a golf course lawn full of chemicals his kids can play in.
Up the street another man has filled his land with old cars. They rest as
memories, taxidermied pets from earlier in life he just can’t bury. All of them
bring me poems.
At work I study cadence and composition, listening to live
recordings of Edna St Vincent between old Bruce Springsteen love songs. These
poems transfix me as I press dough into pans, fill them with fruit, fold and
whisper intention. Intention is the most important ingredient; it can be
tasted, always.
Sometimes I scrawl poetry in poor handwriting behind my
grocery list for the day. Or late at night I’ll write character profiles from
my evening of serving drunken doctors and real estate professionals. A snatch
of conversation overheard while I reach to place the salad just so in front of
their hungry eyes; each comparing the quality of the salad next to them and
across from them to the one before them.
Almost none of the poetry that accompanies me throughout my
day gets to the page in a traditional sense but all of it solves me.
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Brittany Baldwin runs a small catering and personal chef company that maintains its own organic garden. She has written poetry in Portland for eight years while starting her own business and self publishing her own poetry collection, Broken Knuckles Against Knives, Cutting The Food To Feed Me Through This (2005). In 2002 she received a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in local poetry collections Ephemeris and Broken Word: Alberta Street Anthology Volume 1 and 2. She has appeared on KBOO's Talking Earth, won an honorable mention in the Oregon State Poetry Associations fall 06 contest and was featured in the 2006 and 2007 Silverton Poetry Festival.
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