One can look back over a year in many ways. Today we’ll do it with candy.
This little poem not only looks at the various types of candy with which we commemorate the year’s special days but also lists some of my candy memories from childhood, young adulthood, mom-of-young kids years, to current candy temptations.
With it I wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR and another great candy year in 2023!
A Candy Year
I dig through just-arrived groceries
for Cracker Jack and Pink Elephant Popcorn
hold cinnamon hearts tight with my tongue
till my mouth is on fire
pick sweating Smarties and licorice shoelaces
off the icing of my cake
sift through green cellophane straw
to find the last chocolate egg
gobble a bag of Jujubes at the ball game
not tasting one
nibble a Mars bar alone in a London train station
and melt home in my mouth
stroll through the fair with sticky hands
and a cotton-candy-blue face
savour tart apples
dipped in gooey caramel
hoard the bulging pillowcase – M&Ms, Chicklets
Fuzzy Peaches and toffees wrapped in orange and black
thrill my tongue to blisters with Sour Keys
in little brown bags from the corner store
sneak Humbugs and Allsorts
from the Christmas stash in the closet
study the map
to find the coffee cream
suck a candy cane to a pink skewer point,
making it last to the next candy year
© Violet Nesdoly (first published in Calendar, 2004).
Violet Nesdoly 