James Baker Hall, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles Semones
were at the breakfast table, looking down on us.

“I move the boxes to make for fewer boxes, fewer places,” James said.

“With the motion of angels, out of Snow-spume and swirl of gold mist, they Emerge to the positive sun,” Robert said.

“And yet these souls below belong to the Sabbath Country,” Charles said.

Jesus wandered by.

“Good morning,” He said. “If you’re discussing reincarnation again, please let Edgar come to the table. It’s kind of ‘his thing’.”

Joy Bale Boone took His hand, winking at the others. “I think there are waffles this morning,” she said.

Nerve struck, he moped deckwards,
quietly angry, the way twelve-year-olds will be,
too old to cry about a game,
too young not to feel it
all the way down.

Ten beats later,
she followed —
no sorries,
just the cardboard box
my mother had saved from the mirror delivery,
the kind you’re meant to keep,
just in case.

She said, watch.

Then it began:
first her, then him,
punching feet through board.
Enter hose
and it’s “Lucy’s Italian Movie.”
They’re in the grape vat,
laughing too hard,
burning exhaustion off
in soaked cardboard
and loud, clean violence.

Then it was mash.
Then it was soup.
Then it was holy.

They called it compost
and kicked it like faith,
beat it beneath them
until it had no use left
but laughter.

Inside, Annette Hanshaw
crooned, “Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home?”
through the split radio of my chest,
while the magnolia bloomed so hard
it embarrassed the air.

When I made them wash it up,
I didn’t yell.
Just spoke in that tone that means,
don’t make me cry about this too.

They were still smiling
when they sprayed feet
flecked with pulp
refusing to come clean,
the end of a long joke
they didn’t know
they were telling me.

From the tired hotel on 2nd and Broad
where Johnny Cash stayed, the sign says, 
and the Beatles and the termites,
she stares out at a scraped sky 
remembers the conversation that led 
to her own Southernmost Point
where everything stood behind her 

Remembers how he pulled her aside
there’s a whole world out there, 
he said and what are you, chicken?
Remembers his confidence and 
how she followed, entranced, as he
slithered away, back before she realized
he didn’t even have hands

She wondered what the big
apple would taste like – oh it was soft
at the core, some new kind of rotten
and the worm in the middle 
still squirmed on the floor
where she spit it out, laughing 
and writhing at her feet

She lifted her suitcase
with the strength of a woman who
found what she’s looking for elsewhere
Elsewhere. 
She never had to leave home for this.
Everywhere you go, you have to make
your own sparkle –

Any city is sin city if you do it right.

Julia says, This is the kind of soup
you could make anywhere in the country,
even Kansas City.

Her voice is a flute, his a cello.
Jacques says, Even with salmon, right?
She calls him Jack.

Even hunched, her spine
curved like the fishbones in the stockpot,
she towers over him.

Proportions aren’t very important,
she says. That’s about half a big onion.
Here’s some garlic.

Jacques throws tomatoes in the pan.
It’s beginning to smell, Julia says,
like the streets of Marseille.

Julia says, You don’t have to have wine it.
Jacques, smiling & pouring from a bottle,
says I think you do.

But Jacques, gallant, mostly defers to her,
even though he’s doing the bulk of the work.
Julia is the legend, not him, not yet.

Jacques, judicious, ladies the stock.
I think put the whole thing in, Julia says, don’t you?
He says, I think you’re right.

Salt, pepper, thyme, tarragon, saffron,
not too much. You can always add more,
Julia says, but you can’t take it out.

Snapper, scallops, clams in the shell.
Mussels would be very nice, she says,
but there are none. Put in what you have.

Julia shows off a giant mortar & pestle
she & her husband found in a market in Paris
in 1949. Paul had to carry it a mile.

Ten years her senior,
Paul died years ago after a series of strokes.
Jacques looks a bit like him.

Jacques says, Shall we taste it?
Julia takes a delicate slurp, her eyes on him.
This, she says, is one of the best soups you can find.

Remember 
people don’t come to hear you
as much as they come to feel themselves
respond

For the ‘Lady of the Lake’, a legend from Lake Ronkokoma, New York

the townspeople anoint her 

                                                         You’re a beautiful bridge
                                         Where will you take me
                  I run to the edge of the path
It smacks me hard

My insides tremble uncontrollably
My body paralyzed

I can’t cross you

What if humans destroy you
            What if time takes its toll on you
                                     What if fire consumes you 

What if society tries to destroy me
                    What if life takes a toll on me
                                    What if I get overwhelmed

Home

Two wedding guests go hiking
in the Hudson River Valley.
They repoert getting caught in the rain.
Weeks later they will divorce.
Today’s celebration crescendoes
into circle within dancing circle
containing the wedding couple
The rain stops and days of blazing sun follow.

Memaw once saw it move low