Today, Mish is our prompt giver for the Poetics section of our Pub. She is asking us, in spirit of the Season, to give us recipe poems – but not just recipe for food, recipes for solitude, disaster, happiness, peace, war, well being, love, etc. The recipe is my Grandmother’s recipe for old fashioned tea cakes and in the pic, is also her original enameled wooden rolling pin she used when baking over 90 years ago. My mother came to live with my husband and I about two months ago. She has Alzheimer’s and is in frail health, but she remembers these cookies!
Recipe for Memories
She looks puzzled.
Why didn’t anyone tell me I had a child?
Why didn’t mama tell me I had a child?
I sigh deeply and explain,
that when she lived in Tennessee I called
her twice daily –
That she and papa raised me.
That she never mistreated me or left me,
that I always had the best she and papa could afford.
She will nod and sometimes request to be taken to bed.
When she awakens and joins me again in the kitchen,
I mix together softened butter, eggs, vanilla, flour.
I shape and cut and put into the oven.
She sniffs the air.
I remember Mama baking these when I was a child.
I remember her rollingpin with the green handles.
Why didn’t Mama tell me I had a child?
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