Oddments

In search of story

Category Archives: Food


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April 28.20: Coping

I know it’s just pretend,

a world contrived for stage,

but I want to see some people,

some over-easy eggs.

Those stools were made for twirling,

the mustard made to squirt,

the door was made for swinging,

but they’re eerily inert.

The world’s a stage, the poet said,

for fools to strut and fret;

that may be so but still we miss

the people for the set.

 

 

And so, dear reader, we bungle on without people on our sets.

I hope you endure.

With thanks to photographer S.W. Berg

and, of course, to The Bard.


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April 26.20: Coping

Let’s start the week

with a fond reminiscence

of life’s punctuation

with sweet evanescence.

Dessert is but transient

gone in a trice

yet forever recalled

as joy in a slice.

So here on purpled plate

an offering to you

of memory, then hope,

evoked by finest goo.

 

 

And maybe, dear reader, a day will come when we eat dessert with others —

safely!

Meanwhile, I salute you with blueberry goo and hope you are safe and healthy.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg, and his fine eye for desserts!

And applause to Forno, Baltimore, for the gorgeous presentation!


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April 17.20 Again: Coping

Edna and me (not a recent photo)

Some years ago, I spent Saturday afternoons with my Aunt Edna, who lived in an apartment about half an hour away. I always called ahead for her grocery list so that, on my way to her place, I could do her weekly shopping for her. Then I’d pick up sandwiches for us.

When I would come out of the grocery store, shoving the cart into a driving cold rain, or, better yet, into a faceful of wet snow, and then try to get the bags into the car without dropping my purse into the slush, I must admit I was no saint: I grumbled and groused to myself. What a mess I was, and what a mess everything was. And then in and out for our sandwiches, and then wrestle all of it into her apartment…nope, not a saint.

But, on the side of virtue, I think I got a grip on my lesser self before she opened her door. She’d pour each of us a small glass of white wine, always the perfect complement to my all-time favorite tuna fish sandwich, and we’d settle into some good yacking.

Today we are having a very cold, relentless rain. It is dark and miserable. My wonderful daughter-in-law, hooded and dripping, just deposited multiple bags of groceries at my front door, and laughed a bit as we social distanced.

Am I thinking about the cycle of life? You bet.

 

 

 


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April 5.20: Coping

In a chunk of bread

simplicity

crusty warm

felicity

ennobling us

this humble fare

by causing us

to want to share

and so, dear reader,

to you from me

a lap load of crumbs

symbolically.

 

Yet more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

And kudos to McCormick & Schmick’s for the handsome sourdough.

 

To the mystery plant of my April 3 post: could that be Echinacea?

I remember potting one to save it from rabbits, the wretches.

 


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April 4.20: Coping

There’s magic in a daydream;

it conjures up a wish

and makes it seem achieved

though it’s only real-ish.

 I dream I’m leaning in

as far as I am able

amid the light and color

with my elbows on the table.

I add some blue-leg’d roosters

who don’t need social distance

and people without masks,

and I summon up resistance.

 

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg

and to this bright cafe in pre-COVID Dusseldorf.

Family update, dear reader: my son is not worse and this is good!