DECIDING WHAT TO MAKE FOR DINNER
The olive oil warms,
spreading light then receding
into a black-bright border,
a continent, into rivers,
into one river. Now
I hardly know what the oil
is for. Garlic, usually,
but tonight, what then?
I’m absorbed in the world
of the pan, a world within
me, imagined geography.
This time, a country hill.
English, overgrown, citric
fluorescence against dooming
midday dark — a memory.
I was sixteen; I’ve lived three
decades, many lives, since.
How does a place retain
such inhabitance? I have
vastly changed; I’ve stayed
the same. Still, in my sunlit
kitchen, in the middle
of Missouri, the Midwest,
America, over an ocean
away, as I weave a wooden
spoon-oar through warmed
oil — as I decide how to feed
myself — this scene some form
of me didn’t leave is what I see.
I’m not there — but I am
more than anything is. Subtle
or extreme, now I’ll play
the Atmosphere, Weather.
What happens next is everything.
-Laura Scheffler Morgan, 6-14-19 – 7/25/19
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