December 31.19

My new year’s wish for you

is handsomely portrayed

upon this rosy wall

in sprightly accolade:

may dancing pigs attend you,

adventures fill your cup,

may loved ones sit beside you

wherever you sip and sup,

may your plates be heaped with kindness,

your spirit taste no hurt,

may laughter season your days,

may there always be dessert.

.

Wishing you a very happy new year, dear reader,

with muse and chocolate ever near.

Thank you for all encouragement and enlightenment in 2019!

And special new year’s thanks also

to photographer S.W. Berg for this splendid wall!

 

 

December 1.19

Devoid of all drama,

Puritan plain,

roundly predictable,

pale and mundane,

the devious cheesecake

in flypaper disguise:

innocent aspect

entrapment belies.

 

Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

November 26.19

The road to here

from distant there

is mapped as

greasy thoroughfare.

‘Mid stain and splotch,

old gizzard drip,

evolution in

encrypted scrip.

Notes to self

in mishmashed order

chase themselves

around the border,

not merely scrap,

timepiece instead,

the years piled up

like cubes of bread.

From my neatnik Mom

through freeform me

the family stuffing

legacy,

preserved in splat

of butter, sage,

for, I hope,

another age.

 

There was nothing like it: the smell on Thanksgiving morning. No, not coffee and bacon. Onion and celery and butter! Smells to float on. Dad would go to Mass and some years I went with him, but usually I stayed home to help. OK, so it should be “help.” I was very good at putting things away just before they were needed, and I was very good at reminding my mother how I disliked pumpkin pie. What a model child I was!

I hope your Thanksgiving memories are good ones, dear reader, and that, amid the bleakness of our times, we can give thanks for the things and people we know to be true and good.

I thank all of you who have stopped by my blog and left an encouraging word or like. Writing is ever on the edge of not-writing, and your kindnesses have kept me going many times.

A very happy Thanksgiving to you, dear reader!

If there is travel, may you and yours come and go in safety.

 

November 20.19

Make a list!

What good advice!

If I were Santa,

I’d check it twice.

But I’m me,

with list syndrome:

 I write it out,

then leave it at home.

 

I did it again the other day, dear reader; I left the list at home. It’s not my fault! I have a syndrome! But here’s the truly trying thing: I remembered ONE THING from my list, and I was so proud of myself. Light brown sugar! And surely you know what came next. Yes, they were out of it.

November 1.19

Apple walnut cinnamon pie,

winter oven, my, oh, my.

Syrup’d slices, cinnamon dust

rise through nose to memory’s must:

oilclothed table, rolling pin,

floured apron, floor and chin,

pigtail peelings, glowing stove,

maybe nutmeg, maybe clove.

Coming in from bitter world,

boots well stomped and scarf unfurled,

amber warmth starts deep within

like radiator through my skin.

Kitchens of the long-ago,

swathed in early evening snow,

hug me still because I spy

apple walnut cinnamon pie.

 

Huzzahs and thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and kudos to dessert chefs at McCormick and Schmick’s, Virginia Beach, VA.

What memoried fragrance arises from this photo!

As this hectic season hurls us into next year,

I wish you, dear reader,

some sanity from a warm and spicy kitchen.

 

 

 

October 25.19

Sing a song of decadence,

a hymn to sweet excess,

paean to insouciance —

hail, oh, sticky mess!

Concupiscence so caramel’d,

so delicately plated,

inarguable its tenet:

self-restraint is over-rated.

 

 

With a tip of the hat (and maybe the scales)

to The Cake Bake Shop by Gwendolyn Rogers,

Broad Ripple, Indianapolis.

September 29.19

How thoughtful Nature

to warm our eyes

before the year’s

glacéed demise.

What awesome palette,

it must be told,

that blends tomato

with marigold.

As home décor,

though bright and merry,

by that same Nature,

alas,

temporary.