Morning Kitchen Thoughts

Sunday Sribblings

I’m alone in the kitchen, the morning still in half-light. I sit at the table cradling my coffee mug for warmth and hear the wind rattle the windows- there’s a cold front coming in. Cold days or rainy days turn out to be my favorite here where the sun shines so diligently day in and day out. The refrigerator hums, the faucet drips, and Chiron (our cat) is beginning his morning serenade for food. It's good to have the reassurance of morning routine. After feeding the cat I look up to see the food blessing hanging above the kitchen table and remember there will be a new pair of hands to hold before every meal. My youngest daughter, Melissa, is coming for a visit from Biloxi, Ms. It has been a few years since she sat around my kitchen table – we usually go visit them. But this time Melissa wanted to come so she could have me all too herself with no other relatives around to crowd in on her time. So we will sit around the kitchen table and talk about our lives and make plans for our day. Maybe we will even get an art project going at the kitchen table like we did when she was a girl. We can update from finger paints and popsicle sticks. At the sink I rinse out my coffee cup and think how proud I am of her. She teaches High School English and in addition to her regular classes, she teaches what they call “Ramp-Up to Literacy” for children that aren’t quite ready for freshman English. Her students are excited about reading and their reading levels are rising all the time. The Gulf Coast Area project manager for the program and the Director of Curriculum for the school district came to sit in on her class and will be using her classroom as the model for the rest of the school district. She’s the kind of teacher I wish for every child – she doesn’t believe there is any such thing as a student not worth her time and effort regardless of what negative history follows them into her classroom. I don't mind bragging. As I finish up in the kitchen I remember that when Melissa was in kindergarten she used to love to help me make New York Cheesecake – she called herself the “official stuff putter inner”. I would have everything all measured out and it was her job to pour the ingredients into the mixing bowl. I can still remember her saying, “and pour the sugar in sloooooooooow” – her face full of serious concentration. Maybe we’ll make Cheesecake this weekend.

More Sunday Scribblings here

The Dream

CS2 Stock Photo altered in Photo Shop CS2

At eighteen I struggled with the effects of an abusive childhood, catapulted myself into marriage and motherhood, and felt totally disconnected from everyone except my child. Along with fear and regret, delight and small triumphs have carried me into today. Back then, I had one of the most unusual and vivid dreams of my life, one that began as a nightmare and ended in awe. I tucked the dream away safely in my journal and since have molded it into a kind of prose poem.

In a uniform of uncertain loyalty, I struggle barefoot through mire - marsh grasses crackle in my ears as they part. Stubborn, my muscles squirm out of mud's grip until I slide like a snake on solid ground. Terror stalks my scent, warps the air - miles of chase turn into suffocating desert. Somehow, desert drops away and the uniform strips from my skin to whirl like leaves in damp breezes. I sleep warm and naked - covered in sheets of shadows. I wake to hear the rush and drum of pounding surf and walk the murky passageway between two cliffs. On the other side, my senses are consumed with an ocean cast in the colors of living fire - a red sun in mid heaven - a lavender moon with its belly resting on the horizon. I know I will learn to exist in the poetry of this sky and the mystery of these fluid flames.

I think now, even with the struggles I face, I am finally learning.

More dreams at Sunday Scribblings

Superstition

(For Sunday Scribblings)

The lines between superstition,
myth and religion have always blurred into one another for me. Their literal meanings don’t hold the magic; I find the magic in what their symbols and language conjure up. It’s why I collect tarot cards – not to foretell the future, but to use my reactions to their images as a way to dig up what is going on beneath my surface. It’s like the way we can discover the multiple layers of meaning in a poem by paying close attention to its language. But it’s not the cards I want to write about. New Orleans has always been the most delicious concoction of superstition, myth and religion. A place that, even when I didn’t ask, has pressed her breath close to my ear and murmured her offerings. Sometimes I was thrilled with her gifts; other times it took me a while to warm up to them. She’s not always easy to fathom. Here’s a piece for her:

A moon hangs low and yellow while the bayou sits hourless. The white orchid tree offers up new blossoms to the night, one red drop pauses at the edge of a petal. A Screech owl’s stunned eyes search for its hunger. I sit behind the dragging branches of a Cypress, the echo of the city in my eyes and the heat over my mouth like a heavy hand. The Gris-Gris bag hangs damp between my breasts. Everything is waiting.