This Week's Installment in the Series of Poems About Autumn 2005

September 27, 2005
Cooked dinner together last night

Parmesan-crusted chicken pieces with apples and leeks over rice
Comfort food for the first meal we’ve eaten after dark this autumn
chopping, dredging, deglazing, reducing a sauce
And great fun in the kitchen with Bill and little jelly jars of red wine
the smell of leeks and apples browning in their own juices

After dinner we sat at the table
having a long rangy chat about
Bill’s students (it’s getting better now I’m nearly sure)
also food, cooking, cuisine, domesticity, detail
Talked about how we’re told
that we only think food is comforting and that we should stop thinking that
When food really is comforting
It’s nourishing and warm and can be solace
Ideally every dinner should restore

After that I made Bill’s bag lunch
opening the big moss-green tin
where the supermarket bread nestles next to the supermarket cookies
We bought the tin at a junk shop in Tahoe
to hold bakery bread and tortillas and crackers
But now it holds shelf-stable items for packing lunches
On this subject Bill said that what a person eats is always “very in process”
and I loved that turn of phrase

The new morning routine is that
Bill showers
I shower
we eat breakfast
Bill leaves
I get dressed
do my hair and makeup
make the bed
do the dinner dishes
and leave a clean house more or less on time
I like it

When I got to work
the sunlight was coming in brightly
through every window and even under the doors
yellow with a suggestion of pink
And there were a bunch of those bright green pears on the kitchen table again
gorgeous and hard as rocks and cold to the touch
their still-alive color jumped out at me unexpectedly
and made something jump up inside my chest
Whoever leaves them lying all over the table
is doing me a great favor
though I’ve never eaten one

image source is here