It’s the final day of this year’s poem-a-day challenge, and as always I feel simultaneously tired and invigorated. Today’s NaPoWriMo.net prompt asked for a poem inspired by a strange fact or historical nugget, while the Poetic Asides final prompt of the month asked for a coming-to-an-end poem. With a little internet exploring of weird facts and Wikipedia pages, I combined the two prompts to make this:

I get it, Frederic Baur

I’m learning
this strange fact ten years after
your death. That you, inventor of
the Pringles potato chip tube, asked
your family to put your ashes in one.
What flavour once lived in there
before you? Was it the bright red one,
iconic, yet housing the ho-hum plain?
Was it the green sour cream and onion,
a peppy shade to brighten up the
evermore? Were you paid well
for your ingenuity, your creativity,
your push to try something new
with the tried and true? Perhaps it’s
warped of me, yes, to think that once
you popped and now you’ve stopped,
but I can tell you this, Mr. Baur, organic
chemist turned food product sage:
I will never again gaze at that cylinder
of salty snacks without thinking of this
outlandish fact, and how  all of us just want
what’s left kept in what remains.