Recipe for a Winter’s Day in Three Courses
Mr. Bear and Stumpy
Georgia Bellas, also known sometimes as Mr. Bear Stumpy, is both one of the kindest and most talented writers around. Along with stuffed animals Mr. Bear and Stumpy, she hosts the Violet Hour Saloon on Boston Free Radio, a show with music, poetry, fiction, interviews and more. Her poem from PANK Magazine (an online magazine which you should also check out) seems perfect for day five of National Poetry Month, as we get ready to sit down to an Easter day feast. Enjoy.
Recipe for a Winter’s Day in Three Courses
GEORGIA BELLAS
StarterSmoked meats,
nitrate free.
Local cheeses:
Peppered goat cheese
from Colrain,
Franklin County Camembert.
Good bread.
Pinot noir from southern France,
Languedoc region,
in 50-cent Goodwill glasses
etched with wild geese.
There are two birds
on each,
endlessly flying one
after the other
over tall grasses,
again
and again
as I turn them
in my hands.
***
Main course
We had an extra glass of wine,
the windows steamy,
snow falling
as in a snow globe
when we walked back
to find the vegetables
a little too mushy.
All soups have their own stories,
you told me,
and that makes this one.
Split pea soup is now
first snow, red wine, possibilities:
ingredients I wish I could bottle
and file under a new name –
one that could call forth
this particular moment,
bowl and bread and you.
Call it Auspicious-Friday-
Winter Night-Northampton
Bus Trip-Bad Picker-
Hopeful Dreamer-January
Soup. Words that mean nothing
to anyone else;
one of those recipes that never
comes out exactly the same
but is worth trying to get right again.
***
Dessert
The chocolate bar came with
instructions:
Look. Breathe. Snap.
It was Black Salt Caramel,
the salt from Hawaiian volcanoes,
which erupt
when I place a square on the roof of my mouth.
Hold it
there
with your tongue and
press.
The chocolate will melt in 30 seconds,
you read aloud
in a voice as smooth
as the cacao.
Listening to you is like
licking the burnt sugar caramel,
is music.lamplight.two bodies
on the floor
inches from kissing,
mouths sharing a taste
from an exotic place.
A vacation could last forever
in these endless minutes
but after awhile
we breathe again.
