I suspected I shouldn’t
open the oven door
ten minutes before
the timer went off.
Is it a sin if you don’t
know the rule?
The cake looked perfect,
when I checked,
but ten minutes later
the puff of white had fallen,
fallen like Lucifer,
fallen into a dense sponge
from which it would never
again rise. Oh angel food cake,
victim of my impatience,
we ate you anyway,
served you with strawberry fluff,
and you, like a true angel,
stayed sweet. It was no fault
of your own that you fell.
How often am I responsible
for the so called failures
of others? How often
do I, in my excitement,
cause more harm than good?
Praise the fallen angel food cake,
that still, though compact,
offered itself to the birthday.
Praise what is good
that insists on its own goodness,
despite adverse circumstance.
Let me remember
the graceful botch,
the redeemable flop,
the crumb yet moist, so tasty.
Love this!
ha! Thanks, friend! what a great teacher, that cake.
Oy, the innocent things I’ve done that have injured others. Especially the ones I don’t know, will never know about.
Indeed, praise what is good; praise it for the miracle it is.
oh yeah … this being a human, this longing to do only good …
love to you, Eduardo, and thanks for all the unknown goods you’ve done for me.
absolutely delightful. the poem actually goes from light to heavier thoughts . . . but sweet and light again . . .
Thanks, Evie–truth is the cake was quite lovely, though strange! teachers all around us!
I will never be able to see an angel food cake again without delighting in the link you made to Lucifer. The ending rhythm echoed William Carlos Williams for me in a good way. I have so many poems rattling around in my brain and they pop up at times like this.
ah ha! I hear the resonance!!! so sweet and so cold! yes, i suppose this ode is a bit like the plums in the ice box!
That was the one I thought of.