Garden

Gardens are as various as soups or stews.  Can be wild.  Can be as manicured as an elegant bisque.  Gardens offer seasonal beauty.  So does food.   Poetry is not estranged from the wild, from the eloquent, nor the ripe.  Gardens are also of the imaginary-ilk.

Tea kettle

Many things serve as  containers.  Containers for boiling.  Think of the kettle and tea -- a migration from boil to steeping.  Tea is an exquisite food, an elixir which encourages introspection.  Poetry can be on a bad boil but at some point, it benefits from a quiet steeping.  

Rip

It is highly recommended to rip (not cut) greens.  In poetry, it is best to cut much.  Although, I delight in ripping up notebooks.  I think this encourages a greening process for the next season of writing.  May the harvest be plentiful.  May the harvest be imminent.

Burnt

Candles are either usable or burnt to the quick.   Think of the bowl -- full, in stages of full, empty.  How like a meal.  How like the tango -- words and page.  Or the plate and food.  Degrees of emptiness.  Emptiness is beauty in the becoming.

Violette Leduc

Frameline is playing San Francisco as it has for 38 years!  One of the finest banquets -- so far-- is Esther Hoffenberg's Violette Leduc:  In Pursuit of Love.  Here, words are given their due; sometimes poetry doesn't need line breaks.   After all, isn't poetry, food.   Aren't food and poetry, love?  Isn't the artist, always in pursuit of?

Memory

I've been reading Penelope Lively's Dancing Fish and Ammonites in which she has much to say about aging.  Much to say about memory.   Is memory the roux which thickens poetry?  

Foot steps

Walking is measured by foot steps.  Poetry by meter.  Meter, another way of measuring foot steps.  Whose culinary foot steps do you walk in?   Who wishes to walk in yours?

Space heater

Many sources of warmth.  Sun, hands, and the artificial.  Isn't space heater an interesting phrase.  What generates warmth in poetry?  The poem being read.  Being heard.   Like a space heater poetry can be moved around.  Like many vegetables and rice in a wok are moved easily by spoon.  Poetry, by pen.

Whipped

There's cream, of course.  Especially since it's berry & peach time.
Whipped potatoes don't work for me so you need to go solo on that option.
What's whipped about poetry?  I'm noticing the leaves and branches are whipping back in forth more furious than haiku's tail.  Who's haiku?  The gorgeous and precocious 10-year old kitty.
Sometimes, poetry is like a cat's tail not at rest.  

Translation

7 word poem in Pig Latin

Goddess delights in seeing you
wear red

And what food accommodated?  A gift of salmon salad  -- yesterday's perfect lunch.

Visual

Of course, food is visual (think mango, tomato, mozzarella, black olive, mint or basil) and the taking of food is a visual treat.   For me, poetry is no different.  I look at something which I consider beautiful (in the broadest sense) and words happen.

This weekend, I visited the DeYoung and saw the Native American crafts exhibit.  I was deliciously overwhelmed by the Navajo blankets.  Red beyond red.  And that was the hinge for a new poem to emerge.

Here 'tis --

7 word poem in Pig Latin

Oddessgay elightsday inlay eeingsay ouyay
earway edray

Braised

As in escarole from Rich's garden.  Or does one wilt greens?  No matter, here's a recipe for eye & mouth.

Braised Escarole with Delightful Color & Taste  (for Rich)

heat up cooked bacon (who doesn't have that on hand?)
add roasted cherry tomatoes (don't have that on hand -- sorry)
braise escarole
serve in a white dish  (perhaps, with leftover frittata with purple potatoes & those same roasted cherry tomatoes).  Top the escarole with diced honey mango.  Black pepper, of course.

Who doesn't love a white dish with a raised rim?
Who doesn't love friends, even if they don't have gardens?

What does this have to do with poetry?  Poetry is food for the eye & mouth.