Syrup and ice cream, ’round and ’round
softening the lines between white and brown
melting tigers into swirling tan
making ice cream soup last as long as I can!
Copyright © 2000 April Halprin Wayland. From the book We All Scream for Ice Cream!: The Scoop on America’s Favorite Dessert. HarperTrophy. Reprinted by permission of the author.
I wrote this poem in response to a request by author Lee Wardlaw for her book , We All Scream for Ice Cream!, about the history of ice cream. I wrote a ton of ice cream poems! This one hints of a story in which tigers race around a tree and slowly melt—that’s how it felt when I’d stir my own summer bowl of icy chocolate and vanilla…yum!
April’s books include Scholastic’s Best Seller, To Rabbittown, a free-verse picture book, Knopf’s it’s Not My Turn to Look For Grandma! (recommended on PBS’s “Storytime”), the Sydney Taylor Gold Award-winner New Year at the Pier, and the multi-award-winning Girl Coming In For A Landing—an illustrated novel in poems for teens (Knopf). Her CD/MP3 of stories and poems won the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal for storytelling; her poetry appears in numerous anthologies, and she’s a seven-time recipient of SCBWI’S Magazine Merit Award for Poetry. April has taught in over 400 schools across America, in England, Italy, Germany, France and Poland. She blogs with five other children’s authors who also teach writing on TeachingAuthors.com is a founding member The Children’s Authors Network and has been an instructor with the Writers’ Program of UCLA Extension for over a decade. Her website? www.AprilWayland.com where you’ll discover she’s ½ author, ½ poet, ½ not good at fractions.
This poem is deeee-licious, April! Always liked it. If folks want to read more about America’s favorite dessert, WE ALL SCREAM FOR ICE CREAM is now available as an e-book from Amazon.
Awesome poem! Love those tigers!