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.”
