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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bread, food, nourishment, poem, poetry on October 21, 2019| 3 Comments »
Oh, this alchemy of wheat,
salt, water, yeast and heat.
Something so holy about the art
of transforming grain into loaves,
how the scent of the baking infuses
the whole house with earthy incense.
I whisper poems into the bread,
sing to it as it rises, as it rests.
I think of every other woman,
every other man who, for over 14,500 years,
has kneaded and shaped the living dough.
I imagine all of us, flour on our cheeks,
pressing our hands into service,
all of us certain of one thing:
we are called to feed each other.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, fruit, kissing, muscadine grapes, poem, poetry on October 3, 2019| 4 Comments »
I mean, are you kidding me?!
They’re just grapes, sure, but
more like what every kiss wants to be—
surprising and unpredictable.
Intensely sweet, spicy, too,
and tough, unwilling to be summed up,
making me pucker at the same time
I long for more, something
I happened to find in the store,
but the taste, the round essence, is wild,
unable to be tamed.
It’s enough to make a woman wonder
how she’s never tried this before,
as if the world’s been holding out on her—
and if this new thrill is possible, well, then
what else might be out there for a woman to find?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breakfast, food, parenting, poem, poetry, toast on August 22, 2019| 5 Comments »
It’s just a piece of toast.
Bread. Heat. Butter.
Last season’s apricot jam.
It’s just breakfast. Just
simple carbs and a little fat
so that their brains can
function better, bodies
can move without hunger.
It’s just a few bites
that disappear in moments.
No one looks at the meal tenderly.
No one thinks, oh, my mom
must really love me—
look at the way she spread the butter
so evenly to cover all the bread.
No one thinks, she knows
just how light, just how dark
I like my toast. No, they just eat it
and rush toward the door.
Some part of me is grateful
they take it so for granted,
believing love is as easy
as pushing down a toaster lever,
as simple as saying thanks.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged food, garden, ode, poem, poetry, vegetable on August 20, 2019| 2 Comments »
I can imagine not everyone would look
at this plate of grilled pattypan squash
and start to salivate. I was one of them once,
those who think they dislike zucchini, crook necks,
patty pans. I, too, shunned the spongy flesh,
the seeded core. I was a scorner of squash.
I don’t exactly remember when it changed,
when I stopped wishing it off my plate,
began to grow it myself. Began to crave it—
and not just grated into sweet bread.
Not just sliced and forgotten in a rich tomato sauce.
No, I came to delight in the very squash-ness of it—
the way it embodies the abundance of summer.
The way it takes on other flavors but never
abandons its own. And here, tonight,
stacked on my plate like small green suns,
blistered and sweating from the grill,
the pattypan squash are luscious, delightful,
so utterly themselves. How hard it used to be
to appreciate them. I remember. How easily
it comes now, this thrill in what summer provides.
