It never ceases to amaze me how very connective the Internet
is. I have "met" so many people through this blog.

Just
today a woman from Chicago wrote to say that she’d like to use my "balabusta" poem as part of a wedding shower gift. She also wanted to
know if I had any other balabusta poems.

I am delighted that this woman, who is 67 years old and a former English teacher at the University of Wyoming and Iowa State University, wants to use my poem as part of an elaborate shower gift she is giving to a colleague’s daughter. I am also incredibly impressed that she asked in the first place. That seemed pretty classy to me.

And no, I don’t have any more balabusta poems.

Balabusta is a
Yiddish word that means terrific homemaker or super-efficient housewife.
There’s an exclamation in American Jewish that goes: "such a balabusta
you are." It’s something you would say after a wonderful and effortful
meal. Or when admiring an immaculate apartment. 

I also wondered how exactly this woman from Chicago found the poem in the first place – it appears
on the Internet in two places, but still. So I googled "Balabusta" but there
was no link to it there.

My husband, also known as Mr.
Knowledgeable, suggested I try "Balabusta Poetry" and lo and behold –
there it was, number 2 on the google roster, which directs surfers to
the Poetry Superhighway, where the poem was published in January 2005.

This Chicago woman and I have exchanged a flurry of e-mails. She sounds very nice. She even asked what kind of photography my husband does because "we are always looking for new talent for our publications," (she now does public affairs, communications and fundraising for an environmental organization ).

Ooooh, I thought, maybe something more will come of this connection. So I sent her a link to No Words_Daily Pix by Hugh Crawford because, as she said in her last post: "God works in mysterious ways."

Here is the poem that the woman from Chicago admired.

Yiddishe Mama

Such a balabusta
I am
bringing this tin of
homemade cookies

More fodder for
your extravagant elucidations
your theoretical be-bop

Chewing them slow
you savor the X-ray view
swallowing the id of me

Flavorful, rich
Freudian frosting
Purveyor of
phantasmic erogeny
and childhood suffering

I whipped up these
mnemonics of small
sweet longing
in my hot basement kitchen

For your plaisir
and your analysis, of course

Sugar on your lips
you lean forward
eyes shut tight
receptor of
psychoanalytic radio signals

and riff radiantly on my
unconscious confections

Take them for what they are

my cookies
are yours

-Louise G. Crawford