Kinds of Honey

1. The seven-year-old at the farmer’s market has (much) better-looking pea seedlings than I do!

2. I would please like a greenhouse.

I love blue and white together. My mother got these Delft cow salt-and-pepper shakers for me in one of my many poverty times.

When I look at them I think of farmhouse kitchens, windmill towns, and generosity.

Today had the bluest sky that I’ve seen in ages. The far-away mountains, the ones tall enough to have snow on their peaks, stood out so stark and white, so perfect they seemed to be posing for a picture. (If only I’d had my camera!)

I hate sitting still on all days, but these sorts especially. At least my co-worker and I could eat lunch outdoors. The wind blew our hair around our faces and we watched geese fly to the tops of the buildings across the street.

Sometimes the geese are brave and come up close to the glass front of our building. My desk is right by the entrance, and one afternoon, about the time when you really can’t focus on work very well anymore, one of them tapped, rat-tat-tat, and I jumped up to see. She (or he, you really can’t tell, can you?) got alarmed by me and stepped back, took a little time to consider, then came and tried again.

Oh how I wanted to let her (or him) in! It would have been nice to have a visit.

Miss T. and I of course had to go outside for a walk, and she played in the creek, and then home we came for dinner. Food is so much more satisfying after you’ve done something physical, I think. It feels like you’ve earned it.

So I piled some spinach and cilantro and eggs atop toast with a hot red pepper sauce, sprinkled some salt, and admired the early evening light. How does it do that? Normal things become worth taking a second look.

To be enjoyed thoroughly with the Irish scenery in Leap Year and a contented sleeping dog. I am grateful for these things that make me pause and take notice; to remember that it is not all about cavities and unfulfilled dreams, or even things that might happen but still haven’t. This Thursday is a day of life. One might as well gather all the good out of it that can be found.

The sliver of moon

is such a cliché

as it hangs there

in the blue velvet sky.

.

I am glad to see it

through the glass door

across the patio,

above the parking lot

and the city glow

and the rows of houses.

.

If I could just reach out

and touch it for one second

maybe I would know its

reason for shining

so quietly, its content

in being the simple,

marvelous thing that it is.

My gum below the cavity throbs,

my eye has an odd red spot

and the burn on my back

from one careless bump

against the fireplace’s glass

has blistered, bled, and peeled.

.

What is more difficult to tolerate?

These sores, or the forever days

of empty activity,

the repetition of failure

a persistent moth of the mind?

I swat at it and miss. It crowds

the light I am so close to putting out.

.

The surface becomes trivial –

it hardly matters as it mends with

time, ointment, oil. A trip to the doctor.

An apple. Honey and oats. Ice. Heat. Rest.

.

But the soul’s salve must be hope.

.

Even lying, exhausted, on the cracked

floor of try, try again –

it is still possible to imagine

an old barn and stacks of hay

and a black-haired collie trotting

near my heels, along a broken fence.

There might still be daisies in ditches,

a wind vane’s slow turn, and calves

galavanting through grasses to find us

to push close and toss their heads,

to stick their noses in buckets of fresh milk.

.

Maybe a wedding quilt. A kitchen table.

And a hand, held out, solid and warm and kind.

Easter Sunday, we sing in white dresses

in church pews, our hands resting

on the wooden backs in front of us.

.

And somewhere between the organ’s chords

I close my eyes to become a child

running through all the lace and white

with a pinwheel, its colors glinting.

.

Everyone else pauses –

then they reach toward each other 

to find hands, to move out

of pews and down rows.

.

The floor widens. 

Skirts spin into brighter hues,

and the men laugh their deep laughs.

The women’s hair shines in the sun.

.

Children hold ribbons and weave in and out

of the crowd, shouting. Awash in songs

we all know, in harmony and waves.

.

No one stops to point out joy or tell how

to seek and share it, because no one needs to.

.

Because You are here.

.

You are the light through the stained glass,

the swish of fabric and the flush of cheeks.

.

You are the child’s soft hand-hold, the old woman’s twirl,

the preacher’s hymn, the girl’s dancing shoes.

.

You are the cross on the wall and

the pine tree from which it was carved.

.

You are the door, flung open.

You are the wind turning the wheel.

I finally did it!

At last I have made a pastry crust that is the right flaky, crumbly, dry-but-buttery texture in your mouth.

This has been years in coming. Mainly because, not liking to fail, I have tried very, very sporadically and frequently given up.

But this time it worked! Even with primarily whole wheat flour. I had to call my  mother and tell her. I wanted to stand outside on the patio and make everyone who walked past have a taste.

All ingredients were chilled. A key factor. The process was quick and the freezer was sometimes helpful. Thanks go especially to Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson for their book Rustic Fruit Desserts and its galette-crust-making instructions.

A squash and potato galette seems like such a winter dish, and wrong for spring, but here there are not yet many spring vegetables to be had. Green onions maybe, if you started from seed very early. I have some pea shoots that I am trying hard not to eat completely. Something has to remain for peas to grow on, you know.

So, winter dishes are still to happen in this house. They remain scrumptious and wonderfully hearty, and the nights still get cool enough to make them appropriate, after all.

Meanwhile we buy tomato frames and lattices or fencing for climbing vegetables. We check frost dates, again. We move plants outside for a few hours to get a taste of the fresh air and the real weather.

We dream of the early greens, as we wiggle toes into last year’s sandals.

I can get stressed when I bake in this state. Darn altitude! Less of this ingredient, more of that one, but not quite that amount, or maybe so. Try, and then see! Failure is not my favorite thing. Flops lead to discouragement.

I have learned to cook, much more, and with much more bravery, since the move. This is a good thing. And I like cooking, the excitement, the flexibility, the way it is almost always best with lots of vegetables. (It is unfortunate that vegetables is such an unpleasant sounding word, isn’t it?)

But baking I have backed away from. And this is sad as I have long found baking to be a great comfort. There is somehow more of family and love in it for me. A sense of home. This is where I live. A place holding the scent of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Crumbs falling on the counter as the cookies get stacked on a blue plate. A loaf of bread under a white tea towel. Pumpkin bars covered in whipped topping, ready to go to a church picnic. 

So I wanted to bake this week, to undo the strain of hectic things, even with the underlying tension of perhaps not succeeding. In my Midwest I rarely worried about rising and dryness; baking largely consisted of throwing things together that would more than likely turn out. My expectation now is that they will not turn out unless I have done everything quite perfectly!

Oh, dear.

Apple cinnamon muffins happened because I had the right ingredients in the house. Also, the apples I’d gotten from the supermarket were all right but really would taste better baked into something.

And they turned out! Lots of apples held together with just a little flour. Eaten warm it’s like apple pie in a muffin. Which is best for the days (nearly all, for me) when you must run out the door to work, and grab breakfast on the way.

Of course, it is nicer to sit down and eat in the sunlight. Slowly.

That is what weekends are for. Pajamas and breakfast. Sweet Saturday!

Clatter of keys.

Chatter of teeth, tongues.

.

On and on and on and on

we pour our this-or-that

listen-to-me out there.

.

A pile of messages

gathers on the desk.

.

She clunks down the phone

pulls the twisted cord,

takes the stack of

post-it notes and looks

them through.

.

Then rips

once, twice,

peacock-blue and

duck-yellow into confetti

.

to flutter down the cardboard

box full of your many, many words.

Please, world.

.

The jam of letters becomes nothing

when everything contradicts

or repeats. And repeats.

.

Close down the webpage.

All four, actually,

and their long streams.

.

Stretch on your back and watch

the way the wind moves the

curtain against the sill, the

way the cat steps across

the wood floor to find

the spot of sun on the rug.

.

Listen to how the sound

of the mockingbird reaches

through the torn screen.

.

Let the aspen tree, twirling

outside within the day’s light

tell you about all you need to know.

There is something I love about cleaning on a Sunday. I know, you’re not supposed to as it is a day of rest. Yet I find healing in it. And aren’t Sundays very much about renewing the soul? Making the space around me beautiful renews mine.

So the dogs have been bathed, the carpet vacuumed, the kitchen counters wiped clean, and there is laundry running. Dishes in the dishwasher. I love the sound of our dishwasher; sometimes I wish that it was located in my bedroom so it could swish-swash me to sleep at night.

After cleaning comes a walk at Golden Ponds, for me and the dogs. The water and trees here are such a help. Nothing will be very golden, as outside is overcast, but never mind. Out we go, and away from all the reminders of things to do or have or be.

T. wants to badly to go in the ponds but dogs aren’t allowed to swim here. Colorado doesn’t like dogs in the water in general, it seems. (Colorado. Help me out here.)

The water birds taunt her. Geese. Ducks. Herons. They are laughing and she, she is fighting against every gene in her body. (I must help her with this significantly.) The last time we came I could hardly walk her at all, and we left with me furious and her sulky. This time, we have our two new magical Gentle Leaders and life is better, at least for the dog walker.

M., my roommate’s dog, hasn’t been here before. I think he wonders what geese might taste like. Come here, I just want to chew on your neck for a few minutes, please! Or perhaps he wonders how they might play with him. He prances that husky prance and twirls under his leash but he, and T., are still stuck with me.

I am so glad to have found this water spot. Far from the blandness of beige apartments and factory parking lots.

A cloudy day. A light wind’s chill. Home for afternoon coffee and a stack of favorite books, and two sleeping dogs on the clean floor.

I wanted it to be narcissus,

because I knew the story of

that flower’s name, understood

why such a delicate whiteness

would be drawn to itself,

peering into enchanted pools.

Hop, hop, from bunches of grass

and rock across the wetlands.

The frogs were trilling and chirruping

and oh, how loud together! Heels

sunk into water. Ripples ran to trees.

.

I wouldn’t pick the flower; it lived

here. So I skipped over the meadow,

over the hill, and back home to where 

a book called it trillium. I closed the

book and frowned. And forgot often in

the  next few years that my narcissus

was really trillium, and ought to be

called so. Until, one day, it just was

trillium, so rightly trillium,

a dancing, singing, happy sort

of flower, without a bowed face

drawing her to a lifetime of lonely

self-worship. Trillium, laughing,

turns her face out, three petals open

to beckon, to say, Dance! Sing!

To greet the world, and me.