The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook

Image: Beth M. Howard

 (for Ruth McAdam)

 This is my mother's cookbook, its spine loose

with age, the fabric bare of colour at the seams

and weak, so it must be held tenderly, the way

my mother knows, easing into its pages

with her disobedient-knuckled hands.

This book is my mother's; she navigates

its mysteries with indifferent skill,

reads the runes of food-stains,

the faded trail of silverfish

who ate their random way over words;

she has the eye to decipher the tastes

of another time, scrawled

in the margins, invoking the power

of other kitchens, the fit of old aprons,

the shape of a family

swallowed into other lives.

This book's pages, furred with use

fade to brown. Its leaves have pressed

my mother's memories in perfect squares, the things

she needs concealed from time,

things she likes to come upon by chance:

household tips and obituaries, invitations

to weddings. My first poem is in there, and the card

someone made for mother's day. Sentiment

among the weeds of recipes she clipped

in more ambitious days

that crowd, untasted, between the even rows

of meals we chewed our way through

but never knew the names of, all those years'

worth of peeled vegetables and trimmed meat,

a lifetime's preparation vanished

into our waiting mouths.

~ Rhona McAdam

The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook

Image: Beth M. Howard

 (for Ruth McAdam)

 This is my mother's cookbook, its spine loose

with age, the fabric bare of colour at the seams

and weak, so it must be held tenderly, the way

my mother knows, easing into its pages

with her disobedient-knuckled hands.

This book is my mother's; she navigates

its mysteries with indifferent skill,

reads the runes of food-stains,

the faded trail of silverfish

who ate their random way over words;

she has the eye to decipher the tastes

of another time, scrawled

in the margins, invoking the power

of other kitchens, the fit of old aprons,

the shape of a family

swallowed into other lives.

This book's pages, furred with use

fade to brown. Its leaves have pressed

my mother's memories in perfect squares, the things

she needs concealed from time,

things she likes to come upon by chance:

household tips and obituaries, invitations

to weddings. My first poem is in there, and the card

someone made for mother's day. Sentiment

among the weeds of recipes she clipped

in more ambitious days

that crowd, untasted, between the even rows

of meals we chewed our way through

but never knew the names of, all those years'

worth of peeled vegetables and trimmed meat,

a lifetime's preparation vanished

into our waiting mouths.

~ Rhona McAdam

Epistle

My love writes in another language.

His large hands take the pen

on delicate journeys of curious

syllables, a sough on the tongue, a small

crashing of consonants, muted in the cave

of his mouth. He is lost

in another thinking, his large hands

frame the page, the letters kiss across paper,

silver filigree tied into new shapes

that please my love's eye, horizons

of aspen reaching words to the upper margins

of sky, the blue lines, the white

paper. I am weaving in and out of his story

in it I speak to my love in his mother

tongue, my lips move toward him, closing

on the soft sweet song of the words

he's always meant to teach me

on winter nights like this, the cold

a blue line of frost on which his words

hang cold as frozen birds, and his big

hands warm them to flight again

a mystery inscribed in words

I only know in dreaming, they circle

before sleep and disappear, slivers

in the blue lines, gleaming.

~ Rhona McAdam

Epistle

My love writes in another language.

His large hands take the pen

on delicate journeys of curious

syllables, a sough on the tongue, a small

crashing of consonants, muted in the cave

of his mouth. He is lost

in another thinking, his large hands

frame the page, the letters kiss across paper,

silver filigree tied into new shapes

that please my love's eye, horizons

of aspen reaching words to the upper margins

of sky, the blue lines, the white

paper. I am weaving in and out of his story

in it I speak to my love in his mother

tongue, my lips move toward him, closing

on the soft sweet song of the words

he's always meant to teach me

on winter nights like this, the cold

a blue line of frost on which his words

hang cold as frozen birds, and his big

hands warm them to flight again

a mystery inscribed in words

I only know in dreaming, they circle

before sleep and disappear, slivers

in the blue lines, gleaming.

~ Rhona McAdam