It wasn’t that I was in from way out of town,
(– A thousand miles? It’s nice you could come visit.)
Or that we sat around a too crowded kitchen table,
generations: Grandmother, second cousin, thirds,
tearing up to recall men gone long, all. A first.
Or that it would be the last I witnessed
Mary Nell or Willie Faye in dressy street clothes
instead of the zippered housecoats
preferred by those who can’t button
or who reside in the same pale mode daily
no matter who might come to call, anymore,
when they do. It wasn’t the cornbread dressing
renowned, if a tad underdone. Or the black-eyed
peas, a treasure with snaps and floating fatty bacon,
this year’s harvest pulled from the deep
freeze. Or peach cobbler (sheltered prize, the festival
is in August, always the first weekend — You know
Bobby Gail’s daughter was up for princess, this time),
or native pecan pie ( — You know, the worms let them alone
this year and Ruth was able to collect bags of them
with the girls and sold them to fund that cheerleaders’
camp? Lord, what she does for those girls, carrying
on.) No. It was the giblet gravy that did me in, thin.
Filled with floating bits of organ meat that told of broken
hearts and filtered stories and guileless love.

* * *
Written for this week’s Read Write Poem prompt, about the occasions of food, the associations. Read more poems in response to the prompt here, and check back often this week, for it is a special holiday weekend, and people might be a little distracted by “making” more than “recollecting,” so might take a while to post.

Editorial comment: I wrote the prompt. And I had a Hard Time writing to it. Hmmm. Too much to work with, I suspect. Way. Too. Much. Might be a good series to look at.

Related posts:

1. as black as a bird flying out the window
2. digging in
3. …deb for Read Write Poem – Metaphor