Seattle 70, or Poem - September Love Song

September Love Song

Your sunshine finds me elbow-deep
in the end of the season's basil crop,
stripping leaves from tough stalks
into a basin in the sink.
The pile grows as I sing.

In the oven, my first sourdough bubbles.
It takes whole days to go from starter
to finished loaf. but I have time like this,
for this,
to pickle some green tomatoes,
roll the rest in cornmeal
and fry them, served with hot sauce
as fast as they come out of the pan.

These are days I have dreamed for:
when I can look around the kitchen at the end of the day
and see evidence of sunshine, dirt, and my own hands.
I see the same things in you.
Someone took time to make you
out of these long warm days,
racing beauty for her crop,
picked your features at their fullest,
before they spoiled,
preserved them in honey so I could find them
twenty three years later still intact, and sweet.

You gave me a bucket of asian pears,
hard as golf balls, and asked
"can you do something with this?"
and I said yes, bring me your unripe, your spoiled,
the mysterious vegetables you don't know how to eat,
bring me the colors of summer and I will do my best
to keep them through the rainy season.
You know how to bottle sunshine?
Three cloves of garlic, a fistful of basil,
a squeeze of lemon and as many tomatoes
as you can fit in the jar –
boom! A photograph of summer,
of your toddler self with angel hair,
pocket poor, but kitchen rich
(just taste those green tomatoes).

In winter,
I barely cook with the sauce,
I just take it out of the freezer
and smell it: clean soil, river rocks,
bright colored things bursting from their skins,
remembering the days when the race was on
and the sun was ripe
for picking.