Poem 47 Pandemic Day 54)

Early Evening in the Kitchen of Love

Love is always stirring and 

thinking about what it will do.
St. Teresa of Avila

The light runs

in through the window

like somebody's chasing it.

Her hair is all wild,

and she hums

and dances a little,

with those hips of hers,

serious hips, good for toting

babies, or propping open 

the screen door

while she calls me

down from the backyard tree.

And this is the call

I've been waiting for;

this is what I want to know:

what Love's been fixing

for me. So I push

into her kitchen,

stand on tiptoes,

try to see

what she's got

in that big pot of hers.

Is goodness 

something the mouth 

can decide?

Years later; the smell

is almost an ache,

the downdraft

of left-behind dreams.

I stand

facing the stove

a long time.

I stir and wait,

hoping to catch the secret 

sleeping in the low

afternoon,

wake it steaming

in the valley 

of my spoon.

Susan Steger Welsh, Rafting On The Water Table,  Minnesota Voices Project #96, New Rivers Press, 2000.  

Such a wise and poignant voice has my friend Susan.  I haven't seen her in years since I left our writers' group that met regularly at a coffee shop on Grand Avenue.  The book that this poem comes from was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.  The other poems in her book are equally worthy. 

"The kitchen of love"... does this call to mind any happy memories for you?  My mom would make homemade doughnuts and she would plan the deep-frying to coincide with my arrival home on the school bus.  Her gift of love was fresh, hot doughnut holes and a glass of cold milk.  As I remember it, that humble kitchen in our tiny farm home glowed with warmth and love on doughnut days.