There is the moment when the woman
is deciding what to make for dinner—
a tofu curry with beet greens from the garden?
Or maybe guacamole with all those avocados
she bought on sale. When she reaches
for the greens, that’s the kind of moment
when a Greek goddess doesn’t appear beside her
and shake her head as if everything depends
on the woman choosing the guac.
Something wonderful about a choice
with so little consequence. Red socks or blue?
The low green vase or the clear vase from Finland?
The woman has read about the butterfly effect,
trusts a life—in fact all of civilization—is built
on every smallest choice and inaction.
But tonight there is peace in the way she presses
water from the tofu, then slides the white cubes
into the pan. Six seven, as the kids would say.
The scent of turmeric fills the room.
If a goddess were to show up, she’d probably
just ask for a glass of sauv blanc and join
the woman for a bowl of curry. They would
sit at the kitchen table for hours, laughing
as the cats chase each other across the room,
talking about the three-hour movie they just saw.
Tomorrow, the choice. But tonight,
the goddess nods at the sunflowers on the table.
“I like your low green vase,” she says.
Posts Tagged ‘food’
The Night Before the Big Decision
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged athena, butterfly effect, choices, decision, food, goddess, odyssey on August 19, 2026| 2 Comments »
Two Thousand Three Hundred Forty
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, food, graduation, letting go, love, lunch, mother, school on May 22, 2026| 4 Comments »
That’s how many school lunches
I’ve made her, more or less, since
that first day she held my hand and we
stood on the grass outside the elementary school
before the first bell rang. Her hair was blonde then,
mine not gray. I’m not crying as I make her
lunch this morning. Dilled bean and rice salad.
Fresh blackberries. Pretzel sticks.
Honeycrisp apples sliced into thin rounds
that her friends call “floppy apples.”
Maybe I’m crying.
Me and all the other mothers on the last
day of the last year of school. Thinking of
two thousand three hundred forty bleary mornings
when I woke to pour love into plastic containers
along with dried mango and tofu cubes,
seaweed strips and yogurt tubes.
Okay. So I’m crying. I nibble the squared off core
of the apple to gather every last bit of sweetness.
When it’s gone, I lick the stickiness from my fingers.
When René Makes Peruvian Noodles and Huancaína
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, peru, travel on December 16, 2025| 6 Comments »
I ladle on extra sauce.
Roasted peanuts. Onion. Mint?
Fruity heat of yellow pepper.
It’s creamy, spicy, decadent.
I think how far Renee has traveled.
A wide river hides in his smile.
A great cat prowls through his name.
There are mountains in his eyes.
When Renee makes Huancaína,
I taste somewhere I’ve never been.
A sacred valley with ancient paths.
Misty skies and terraced lands.
His gift to us: within moments of tasting,
we travel flavors centuries in the making.
Let Us Gather in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, community, food, garden, gathering on July 25, 2024| 6 Comments »
Let us gather in the garden in late July
when the snap peas are fat and sweet on the vines
and the tiny white cilantro flowers charge
the air with fragrant green. When the sunflowers
have not yet opened, but the cosmos are already
a riot of pinks and white and the nasturtiums
have erupted into spicy orange petals
and the heads of lettuce open and open
as if looking for the edges of the universe.
Let us gather when the onions are beginning
to swell and the kale leaves are big as elephant ears
and the basil is lush and vigorous and flourishing
and it’s so good to be here with our hunger,
not to consume but to be opened by goodness,
to know ourselves as part of this generous
plentiful land. It so good to be here
together amongst the ripening,
to share the living blessing, to welcome
each other into the garden of our hearts,
to nourish the seeds of all that is to come
forming even now inside our open hands.
Dairy Queen Drive Thru
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, food, grief, ice cream, memory on July 6, 2024| 19 Comments »
Plain vanilla. Soft serve.
You loved simple things, Dad.
On this day of your birth
I am a pilgrim who arrives
by car at the drive up window
at the closest DQ, an hour away.
There is devotion in the way
I savor the cold. The cake cone
melts on my tongue like a wafer.
There is joy in sampling
what brought you joy.
I ate the whole thing, Dad,
though it was too much.
But I didn’t want to waste
a bit of it. For those few sweet
moments, it tasted like
having you back.
The Welcoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, friendship, singing, welcoming on June 11, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Moudi
With an open umbrella, he met me
in the rain having walked barefoot
to the place where I’d parked.
He handed the umbrella to me.
In the warm bright home,
he offered me a soft, dry chair.
He served warm bread wrapped
in a green and white cloth
and his partner sprinkled zatar
and olive oil on the labne.
The kale salad was crisp
with sweet chunks of beets
and thick creamy slices of avocado.
And in the warm, rich stew
offered to us in a rounded pot,
the eggplant disassembled itself
alongside chickpeas and tomato.
But before we ate, he served us a story
of a place where people begin a meal together
with spontaneous singing of sorrow and praise.
What stopped me then, while I sat at his table,
from singing? So I sing now,
of sorrow that I let my fear of singing it wrong
be louder in me than the urge to sing.
I sing of praise for the second chance.
I sing a prayer for the courage to learn
how to sing a new song, and the chance
to sing it again. And again.
Kabocha
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, Kabocha, squash, surprise on December 4, 2023| 10 Comments »
Hiding inside the tough and blotchy skin,
is bright orange flesh that turns velvety,
creamy, fluffy and sweet when roasted
or baked or steamed. On this cold day,
the kabocha squash feels like proof
that goodness exists in places
we might not have predicted.
Hard places. Dull places.
Knobby and squat places.
I want to sing kabocha.
I want a voice that orange.
I want a trust in life
that earthy, that sweet.
Ode to the Saltine Cracker
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, grief, mother, son, tears on December 9, 2021| 12 Comments »
Oh, salty square,
oh, bite that turns
to savory paste,
oh, flaky wafers
stacked in long
white plastic sleeves,
you fed the boy
who could never
eat enough,
attended him
through online school,
travelled with him
in his book-laden backpack,
fueled him as he
researched twin-
turbocharged V-8 engines
and fawned over
Italian luxury cars.
Finding you today
out of place
on the shelf beside
my thesaurus,
an unopened box,
I crumpled,
longing for the boy
who would have opened you.
I’d love to clean
your stupid crumbs
from the couch.
All afternoon, I taste it,
this daily salt
that falls to my lips.
The Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, food, fruit, grief, love, mother, pomegranate, ripening, son on October 21, 2021| 6 Comments »
It still had its leaves on it,
the pomegranate she handed me.
And holding that smooth red sphere
in my palm, I felt not only
the jeweled weight of each bright seed,
but also the weight of the many nights
the fruit had hung on the tree,
felt how the nights had slowed the growth
so the fruit could develop more sugar.
Not all things get to ripen.
Oh, this small gift of sweetness.
How it opened in me such red tenderness—
the memory of a boy learning how
to open and eat a pomegranate,
scarlet juice trickling down his chin.
And now. I hold it in awe,
this beautiful thick-skinned globe,
hold it less like a fruit,
hold it more like a love
I was just beginning to know.
Pickling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged canning, food, joy, kitchen on August 8, 2021| 4 Comments »
For hours we stand in the kitchen
and slice cucumbers, peel garlic,
prepare the brine. There is joy
in preserving what is wonderful,
in letting the self believe in a future
when we will pull the jar from the shelf
and remember what it was like
this summer day—as if we could also
fit into the jar the laughter, the pink
of the zinnias up to our waist,
the chickadee song and the warm,
warm nights. To be present
does not mean to ignore the future—
but oh, as we prepare, such joy
in singing along to an old favorite song
on the radio, scent of dill in the air,
summer still unfolding in the yard,
in the jars, in our joy.
Potica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, daughter, food, grandmother, memory, parents on July 23, 2021| 2 Comments »
Sitting in Colorado
I think of my parents sitting
in Illinois,
how tonight in different
kitchens together we savor
the Slovenian sweet bread
of my father’s childhood,
the sweet bread
his mother would make—
savor not just the taste
but the memory of the taste,
the paper thin crust,
the ground walnuts,
the honey.
Savor not just the loaf
but the memory of the hands
that once made the loaf,
the happiness as we ate it,
the communion in the joy.
Tonight, I break the bread
into tiny pieces, eat it slow,
imagine us at the same
loving table now
and years and years ago.
We are alone, not alone.
The bread tastes
like family, like home.
If you are unfamiliar with this Eastern European nutroll delicacy (pronounced puh-TEET-suh), you can read more about it here.
Long Distance Breakfast
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breakfast, cake, daughter, food, mom, mother's day on May 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!
Because I can’t serve you
breakfast in bed, I’ll
serve you a poem,
and knowing how
you like cake for breakfast,
it will be a sweet poem,
with penuche frosting
swirled atop every line.
And because it is a poem,
we can imagine
that the mug with pictures
of your granddaughter
(due to arrive on Monday)
has already arrived
and that it is filled with
Café Vienna, and laced,
why not, with whiskey,
because, hey, it’s a poem,
and you won’t really
get drunk, just happily
tipsy on all the love
served between the lines,
the kind of love that makes you
lean back into the pillows
and close your eyes
and smile like you have
life’s best secret,
the kind of love that makes you
leap out of bed and laugh,
buoyed by joy, a bit of penuche,
creamy and sweet,
still singing on your tongue.
Ode to the Onion I Didn’t Have Tonight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, loss, ode, onion on February 5, 2021| 3 Comments »
And there you were not
on the shelf with your shiny red skin,
and there you were not in the pan
in thin pink rings filling the air,
and there you were not
in the sauce, that warm underlayer
that grounds the bright tomato—
all night I missed you.
All night, the red wine kept asking,
Where is it? Where is it?
All night, I thought of how
what is missing is sometimes
most here.
One Reason to Roast Pumpkins
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being alive, food, pumpkin on November 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Praise the pumpkin
with its orange flesh—
how it softens
and sweetens as it cooks.
Praise the way it lends
its rich and earthy density
to pie and bread, curry and soup.
The body responds
with a something akin to joy—
tethered by humble pleasure
to exactly this moment,
as if a flavor could help us
know god—
as if a taste could help us
become who we are.
Hankering
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arugula, bitterness, food, paradox on June 30, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today again I thank the arugula
for the way it teaches me
that sharpness, too, is what
draws us in, that we come
not just to forgive
but to crave what is bitter,
what bites us back.
Ravenous
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, friendship, love on June 18, 2020| 1 Comment »
Perhaps I was already full
when Danny offered me
a sweet potato pancake
for breakfast, but there
he was with a bowl
of homemade batter
and a cast iron frying pan
hot on the stove, and so
I did what I longed to do,
I said yes, yes to feeding
a hunger that has little
to do with food—
the hunger for someone else
to offer you something
they’ve made, the joy of sharing
a meal together, the honor
of being served. The fact
that the pancake was delicious—
both sweet and hot—
was a bonus. The salsa
he handed me fiery—
fantastic as long friendship,
fierce as gratitude, as love.
How to Slice Open an Avocado
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avocado, food, Kyra Kopestonksky, new, prayer on January 18, 2020| 4 Comments »
After cutting open hundreds, thousands
of avocados, I marvel as my friend Kyra
cuts off the top. Slices it right off.
And I stare at her, at the knife, at the tip
of the avocado listing on the cutting board.
How easily she scoops out the creamy green flesh.
How simply she cuts more rounds around the pit.
All these years, I’ve sliced avocados lengthwise.
It’s as if I’ve just learned a new word for yes.
As if the sun itself just rose right here in the kitchen.
It takes so little to open us, to help us
see everything new. Even that prayer I pray
the same way. These hands. This common fruit.
Monday Night: A Portrait
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astronaut, dinner, food, poem, poetry, prolepsis, space on January 13, 2020| 5 Comments »
You are not a passive observer in the cosmos. The entire universe is expressing itself through you at this very minute.
—Deepak Chopra
Even as she made the cauliflower soup,
she was a deep space explorer.
No one else in the room seemed to notice
she was floating. No one noticed
how gravity had no hold on her.
No, they only saw she was chopping onions,
noticed how the act made her cry. How was it
did they not hear her laughter, astonished
as she was by her own weightlessness,
by the way she could move in any direction?
Perhaps the novelty explains why
she forgot to turn off the stove,
untethered as she was to anything.
It’s a miracle she sat at the dinner table at all,
what, with the awareness that she was surrounded
by planets, spiral galaxies, black holes, moons. Yes,
miracle, she thought as she tasted the soup,
and noticed deep space not just around,
but inside her: supernovae, constellations,
interstellar dust,
the glorious, immeasurable dark.
Shabbat
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, candle, food, kindness, poem, poetry, Shabbat on December 14, 2019| 7 Comments »
for Peter and Lisa
We covered our eyes with our hands
and repeated the sacred words that Peter said,
blessing the pomegranate juice, blessing
the challah bread. And when we were done
with the prayer, we removed our hands
from our eyes and the candlelit world
was surprisingly bright. Such a simple faith,
kindness. The willingness to invite another in,
to make them bread, to offer them soup,
to say to the other, Here. Feast. Rest. To share
ancient stories and offer new wisdom.
To pass the braided bread, hand to hand,
and eat it together. To listen to each other
until the candles had burned through all their wax.
To continue to listen after the light goes out.