The Cook
There are times such as this
Thanksgiving Day when
I have looked down upon
this kitchen or that
table, as though I had become
a fly on the wall, or
detached from it all, a separating
of mind from body for just
that second, I’m free,
and I have seen
them each
for the substances they hold
inside, the pushes and turns and
contrivances that fall, and the
everlasting climbs.
It is in the
many crevasses I look . . .
And there she is, silly woman
who once was a girl but now
is not, holding to a limb:
that broths and butters and
freshly ground wheat might
serve as balms and masks
and potions for just one day
(or maybe, forever?
she prays).
It is your ineffective but best shot,
I tell her, as I wipe the brow and pour
her heady wine.
Many cooks just want everyone to be happy. We go to extremes at times, perhaps thinking
that an extra few hours of simmering the bones for broth might do the trick of
making happiness for all. Ha. Every year I grind wheat berries for flour to
bake bread to make the crumbs to make the dressing for a turkey. It is so much tastier that way, but it is an
ineffective strategy for bringing lasting happiness for even a day, much less forever.
I woke up this morning, thinking compassionately of all the various challenges I perceived in each person’s life at my dinner table last
week, as though I’d been granted a glimpse from above – and then I saw the cook in her endless trying. I laughed
at her, at myself, but there is a deep challenge for the cook too: I
heard the words, “Your ineffective but best shot,” and I got out of bed to
write this down.
