Let Those Love Now

Here is a small offering -- a poem published by The Poeming Pigeon: Poems About Food, which was launched this time last year. I wrote this piece on a happier day eight years ago, but the sentiment still applies today. Thank you to editor Shawn Aveningo and the contributors of this volume. You are all beacons of light.

Let those love now*

I want to make you all some good, hot food,

to feed you polenta baked until it forms a crispy

peppered crust, then serve up ruffled greens

and soft biscuits filled with steaming fruit.

I want to cook all morning and afternoon,

to make you valentine-shaped cookies

sprinkled with cinnamon, and also pies

packed with dark red cherries that sing

with a deep, bubbling juice,

like a choir joining voices beneath

a domed ceiling. I want to feed you all,

from the grandmother left sitting alone

in a shadowed room to the cool, pale sister

with the cracked-plate smile.

Come, let’s all take our places at a table

where our combined brilliance will outshine

all the candles and the stars and the sun at noon.

Let’s pass our stories to one another

like a bowl of plump, green olives

or a basket of warm, sighing bread.

Here, at this table, we can all savor the alchemy

of a creamy cheese laced with chives,

and when we’re done feasting, we can

each have a slice from a single cucumber,

so that its sweet, clean taste will linger

in our mouths.

*Thomas Parnell, Translation of “The Vigil of Venus,” attributed to Tiberianus;

“Let those love now who never loved before;/Let those who always loved, now love the more.”