Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup at The Poem Farm.
When my children were young, eggs made sunny side up and arranged on toast was considered an awesome weekend breakfast. I can’t remember now who in our family came up with this moniker, but we called eggs made this way “golden sunshine”. Three pairs of bright eyes would follow my every move as I cracked each egg as carefully as I could so as not to mess with the central point of this entire endeavor: those perfect, golden, delicious yolks. Each child had their own way approaching the finished product: Elizabeth cut her toast into perfect strips so as to dip each into the yolks, Ben went to work with his knife and fork immediately to create a plateful of yolky bites of toast, and Olivia carefully saved the yolk for the very end.
These days, my kiddos have more elaborate choices for weekend breakfasts when they come home to visit or take us out for brunch: shakshuka, omelettes stuffed with fancy fillings, creamy frittatas with unusual veggies. Their “golden sunshine” days are long ago in the past, but I remembered them so very fondly when I read this poem in Barbara Crooker’s Some Glad Morning:
Eating Fried Eggs at Gail’s by Barbara Crooker
Still warm, slipped from under the feathers of Brownie, Silver, Little Red, brought inside to be cracked and flipped in the hiss of hot bacon fat, cooked fast until the whites harden, grow lacy around the edges, then slid onto a plate, yolks intact, until we break them intentionally, spearing them with our forks, spreading
sunshine all over our plates.