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| Our harvest dries for sweet and savory recipes. |
Dear
Reader, we’re drying lavender bundles for my culinary fancy. This means
it’s time to announce the first, second, and third place winners of the Second Annual
Yule Love It Lavender Farm & Letters Poetry Contest.
My thanks to all who took the leap of faith and submitted
poetry about “The Love of Food.” And my gratitude to Linda Nemec Foster of
Grand Rapids for judging the entries.
I think it remarkable how she chose three poems that speak the love language of food—the inseparable bond between our nourishment, family, and friends.
Please, enjoy the feast!
Fist Place:
La Mia Fame – my hunger
the
wine tastes of sweet oak, a flock of starlings
their
sudden rush of wings in my mouth lifting
me
weightless like notes from a bamboo flute—
and
the bouquet, boysenberry, spiced plum,
the
first swallow a rich mouthfeel, currants
and
dark chocolate doing a tango on my tongue
making
me want to gulp not sip—
the
insalada’s wild greens peppered with
garbanzos
from
the other side of the world where
my
grandmother once crushed them into falafel
and
humus dreaming of America—
there
is a language to this meal, chicken Piccata
garnished
with capers and artichokes, awash
In
white wine brodo, the candle flame
reflecting
on
my water goblet the way it did that Bermuda night
when
we ate Carpaccio and lobster on the patio,
wind
ruffling my hair, cooling our sun burnt skin—
now,
the sunset melts down our window
like
icing, and something floats inside me
carrying
a fullness there is no word for.
By
Carol Was, Plymouth, MI
Second Place:
Six O’clock
What
you show me in the kitchen
is
magic.
Fed
from wooden spoons,
every
meal made
from
your great-grandmother’s cast iron,
imbued
with years
of
secrets
whispered
down generations
along
with seeds passed
from
palm to palm.
Listen, she said, to the snap of peas,
the hush of
basil,
the singing of
rosemary.
What
others can’t combine,
and
see only individuals,
you
make whole,
create
something
other
–
a
bite puckers cheeks,
licks
lips, and spices no longer
need
names.
Because
what needs a name
when
it gives back memories?
If
tastes could be spoken, it would sound
like
a sigh,
and
that sigh would be
every
dish
you
made me.
By
Ashley Huntley, Washington, MI
Third Place:
Dried Lemons
“In
a net,” she says. But they’re loose for
69 cents.
Four
bags ride home, stuff our crisper bins.
We
stir buckets of lemonade, pucker,
add
granular sugar. Tongues play with pulp sacs,
firm
as grapes. She mixes in raspberries, ginger ale.
She
paints. Lemon halves, stars showing, dried,
she
stamps, purple, pink, yellow, patterns ringed
by
thick circles, like embryo nebulas. Raucous
forms
cavort on a celestial canvas.
Cinnamon
hair glistens by daybreak sun.
Fingers
dappled with color, she cresses
a
stained china mug, sips blackberry tea.
Her
dimples lively, she taps my hand.
The
phone rings, Kagen arrives from Ireland
on
the one-fifteen. She bites her thin lip, as she does,
says,
“It’s not about you,” sprints away,
first
love eclipsing weathered bond.
Weeks
later, her key lays on the counter
like
spare change. Space, disarray in the left-over house.
Lemon
hulls, crusted in paint, wither by the window.
In
the crisper, brown spots on puckered yellow skins
join
like the freckle glaze adorning her nose.
At
her unfinished canvas, under hazy daylight,
I
dip newly dried fruit in mauve, fog, ash, charcoal.
Chisel
radishes and stamp them with white.
Arms
ache, fingers search, lost in ethereal dreams.
The
art hovers outside my bedroom door. I pass
our
creation, follow her eyes, ablaze behind the stars.
By
Christian Belz, Berkley, MI
