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I dedicate this poem to my ultimate chef friends Dolly
and Gordon, hard as it may be for them to bear.
Mac and Cheese
“Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat; stir in flour, salt, and pepper until smooth, about 5 minutes. Slowly pour milk into butter-flour mixture while continuously stirring until mixture is smooth and bubbling, about 5 minutes. Add Cheddar cheese to milk mixture and stir until cheese is melted, 2 to 4 minutes.”
I found the recipe on my Mac
for noodles swathed in creamy Jack.
I bought the cheese. Grated it up,
dreaming of when I would sup.
I was tenacious with the grater.
Nobody holds a cheese block straighter!
And I was forthright in each thrust,
for tiny cheese curls are a must.
I mixed the flour in melted butter,
watched the whole mess spit and sputter.
Added pepper, salt and flour.
Stirred for what seemed like an hour.
Added the milk in rapid whirls,
and then poured in the cheesy curls.
Round and and round and round it went.
Turned down the stove, turned on the vent.
Boiled the noodles until tender.
Then, when it was time to render
cheese to noodles, asked my crony
just to drain the macaroni.
But, as he was headed back,
his arm collided with my Mac,
flipping it into the cheese
with such artistry and ease
that for a moment it looked to me
as part of the whole recipe.
But cheese on Mac of Apple kind
is not quite what I had in mind.
My Mac expired in smoke and sparking.
Dogs ran in with joyful barking
to lap up congealing cheese
from counter, stove front, floor and knees.
Cheese, computer, pan and noodle—
I tossed the whole kit and kaboodle
out the window into the grass
where dogs and cats and ants en masse
ate their fill until they popped,
while I wiped and scoured and mopped.
(I doubt that you could find my match
at scrubbing up a cheesy patch.)
But if you need a recipe
for Mac and Cheese, don’t count on me.
Though boiling noodles I learned by heart,
I fear I flunked the whole “Mac” part.
Prompt words were match, forthright, tenacious and noodle. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/rdp-tuesday-match/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/07/fowc-with-fandango-forthright/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/your-daily-word-prompt-tenacious-may-7-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/noodle/
For Cee’s FOTD
There is a special beauty in the broken,
as though established beauty is being reordered–
the predictable broken apart
and presented to us again,
assembled by a different hand.
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Broken.”
to be serenaded by birds,
Watched
Up above us, the birds look down
surveying all within the town.
Impaling bugs, dive-bombing gnats,
pooping on the ladies’ hats.
At outside restaurants, they eye dishes,
and prematurely to my wishes,
long before I’ve finished up,
they swoop down and deign to sup!
For Cee’s FOTD
Melancholy
The campfire collapses into a plaintive rune,
echoing the plangent wolf call of a loon
that floats the silver pathway of the water-jellied moon.
I face our final parting. As I hear its taunting croon,
the humid night surrounds me in its tight cocoon.
Life is a cruel comedy whose laughter ebbs too soon.
The rune “pertho” designates secrets and chance. It’s sign is water.
Prompt words are plangent, anyway, comedy and river. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/rdp-monday-plangent/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/06/fowc-with-fandango-anyway/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/your-daily-word-prompt-comedy-may-6-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/river/
Traveler
I always took the long road home, hoping to take full measure
of all the things along the way in which I could take pleasure.
When life did all its best to make me speed along its road,
I simply switched to unpaved trails to find the mother lode.
My gains were not substantial when measured against gold.
Most of what I’ve acquired cannot be bought or sold,
but the bounty that I gathered will stand me in good stead
as I plan more journeys from my dying bed.
With all my riches gathered, with all my unseen gain,
I will have booked a ticket on the astral plane!
The prompts today are road, speed, substantial and astral. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/rdp-sunday-road/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/05/fowc-with-fandango-speed/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/your-daily-word-prompt-substantial-may-5-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/astral/
Lost
Lost my dolly, don’t know where.
She’s got no clothes and got no hair.
She’s somewhere out there lost and bare,
thinking that I do not care.
I’d go out looking, but don’t dare.
That babysitter over there
(My mother calls her our au pair)
came by foot and ship and air
from a country named Zaire
to sit here on her derriere
and watch me with her icy stare.
I open up our Frigidaire.
Could my dolly be in there?
I climb up on a bedroom chair
and go through Mommy’s underwear.
I do not think that she would care.
I find my brother’s whistle there,
hidden in that lacy lair,
and think it really isn’t fair.
It’s every mother’s cruel nightmare.
My dolly isn’t anywhere!
I had to stop the car to take this photo. I wish I knew the true story behind it. I can’t imagine any little girl throwing out her doll, and the lot was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Someone must have tossed it in there. A mean boy? A jealous brother? Was it unwanted loot from a burglary? My mom and I once rode all the way back out to the dump from town to retrieve a doll’s head we’d thrown away. All the way home, we’d both been thinking about it, sitting there amidst coffee grounds and broken light bulbs. We had pulled into the garage when my mom turned to look at me and said, “Do you want to go back out and get that doll’s head?” I nodded. We did, and I have that head to this very day. If my mom had been with me, one or the other of us would have gotten through that barbed wire somehow. As it is, this image is the only part of the doll that I was able to rescue.
Last Small Gift
for Zackie, 1982-1984
He always noticed high things––
airplanes, kites.
His long fingers
pointed to small things,
moving things, things that needed to be eaten,
people who should leave the room.
He gave second chances.
Even after I bit his finger
along with the cookie he offered as a token of friendship,
and even after the stout and lengthy
cry of outrage in his mother’s arms,
in two or more additional meetings,
he was willing to start over again,
this time from the middle,
at becoming friends.
He never held out his arms to me.
He never cried when I left the room.
Yet he shared with me,
along with a glimpse of a heart that could still break,
all of the pleasures first experienced
which I had once felt,
and some long glances where neither looked away.
Usually, I felt that in between his own needs
he knew everything there was to know about me,
this wise baby,
so that when he rejected me,
I knew it was for good reason.
And when he accepted me,
I felt I’d gained character.
Maybe I found it irresistible
that I had to earn his allegiance,
so that I felt flattered by it—
like the first girl chosen from the bench at a dance.
This baby
that I never knew well enough.
This baby who never noticed the toys I brought him.
This baby who reigned
from the corner of my sofa
under his pointed birthday hat,
never learned to say my name.
But he held something old for me in his eyes.
Promises, perhaps,
that some of the mysteries are left in a life
where most of the presents have been opened,
revealing objects less precious
than the surprises they came wrapped up in.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
