Taking in every aspect of a room from inside and outside. That is precisely what food does when it is lovingly cooked -- although I've never read that in a cookbook. And why not? Two eyes also edit every poem. Once eye on what's there. One eye, looking at what's absent. With both cooking and writing a poem, a reliable window is a good thing.
SLIDES
ReplyDeleteAbsent the particle which holds the air together
and the slow progress of the slimming sun as it wants
so badly to warm something----
wait!
her handmade rugs warm the feet of her grandchildren
and their drawings of wooden trucks are what they see
first thing in the morning--
She is of another time, born on a prairie in a rough hewn
cabin, one of eleven, a mother thin and worn down with work,
a father on the road selling jukeboxes to the saloons.
Many myths spring from this western topography
and they amuse and inform those who hold her hand
on the way to the country store.
We pick up the mail (box 62)and fresh eggs and butter and introduce ourselves to Mr. Packard and his lovely wife, and yes, we say, we are here for the summer.
Warmth in the small town is sweet and full of huckleberries as we visit the neighbors or go to the library across the street. Ice cream follows the dishes of green beans and corn we grew behind the chicken coop. Evenings we can have tea and cookies in the screened in porch and watch the fireflies.
It is never hard to sleep in the big beds with handmade quilts and sneak into each other's rooms, and giggle over the day's events. Breakfast is "square eggs" from the coop, cut secretly by the cook so we think they never appear anywhere else in the world.
Sitting by the window in the afternoon, watching birds and having coffee with her, one felt grown-up and complete. The chipped mugs held spoons, and we had cream and sugar to stir in the hot beverage we never got to drink at home.
Absent from this picture is nothing much that matters. We did not know about the sparseness of money, of the family strife, of scorn from afar, of a future without these two people who made time away from home so precious, so peaceful, so desired.
Yes, I do have pictures, small black and white ones with scalloped edges, of my little ones, some not here anymore, on a summer's day in front of the big white old and rambling house.
Outside and inside, how fortunate to take it in, to be taken in, as if it were a foreign country. And perhaps it was.