June Cleaver Sends Best Wishes and a Casserole
A Poem for Carolee's Mother on the Eve of Surgery
May your apron wrap round your waist
snug as the man of your dreams at your thighs.
May your flour be content to hide its purity
in the darkened circle of a porcelain rooster,
never dusting your cheeks with traces
of another self, another pale incarnation.
May your cookies rise like hips
in heat, hold their softness on your tongue
even after the oven has cooled.
May the man in white deliver the milk
of compassion, seasonal nog and spirits
well before you prowl the morning
floorboards, a rested angel in flannel robes.
With this dish, may your gut fill
with what it needs. May you find
each ingredient at your fingertips.
Labels: friendship, how can anyone write a poem with children tramping around, June Cleaver
posted by jillypoet @ 5:19 PM
7 Comments:
this is beautiful. thank you. i read it twice: once for my mom and once for myself. (i'm greedy like that.)
it's oh so super super nice to be cared for with words, friend. thank you so much.
My best friend's sister goes in for an eight-hour surgery tomorrow morning in Chicago. This (as always) is wonderful. 'S been way too long, and as I read all the way to the bottom I remembered how really GOOD you are!
Merry Christmas, Jilly, even tho' you are Buddhist. I think of myself as a sort of Zen Mormon! Peace on earth, goodwill to men (and women, and children, and animals...and all the rest of it.)
Oh, and may you, too, find each ingredient at your fingertips!
(o)
Damn, Jilly.
(Sweetness sighs and rises on plumped loaves.)
There's much to like in this one, especially the compassion with which it's written.
Wow, what a beautiful poem, Jill, very tight language, lovely images.
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