Migration of the Apricot
Mama plunged into her recipe
box hunting for a clipout
for apricot bars. The instructions
were cut with pinking
shears from Redbook, stained
from splats of preserves & pure
vanilla. I spoon walnuts
& sugar into the sticky orange
concoction, then spread
big blobs over buttery
hand-pounded dough. The zippy
tang of them so unlike the sweet
& mushy homegrown peaches
in our one-stop sign town.
“We can’t grow them here,”
she explains as they bubble
in the oven. You have to go
to Mexico for fresh ones & most
grow further away—Turkey,
Armenia, Morocco. I imagine
mama looking up apricot
in the Book of Knowledge,
grabbing the M volume
to locate the city of Marrakesh
with its red clay mosques, olive groves
& crowded open-air markets.
10 thoughts on "Migration of the Apricot"
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Love it! Redbook—there’s a title I haven’t seen In years, although maybe it still exists? Definitely takes me back. Makes me hungry for apricots.
I love how you use the quaint to evoke such a powerful idea.
Your mom was so awake to the whole world and this poem really does turn to shed light on her wisdom, curious nature and deep knowledge.
The folds of sound in this are like dessert.
A masterful scene: from an ordinary kitchen cut from domestic cloth to–launched by the phrase “zippy tang”–an exotic world of delight.
Linda your writing makes me feel like I’m inside of it looking around – thank you!
This is so evocative – I love old recipe cards, their stains and blurred ink. And looking up something in the Book of Knowledge – wow, takes me back to the encyclopedia on our hallway shelves.
A magnificent feast for the senses.
You capture the sight and taste so well!
Reading this, I feel as if I am right there in the kitchen with you and your mama making a yummy desert and then flung into the world with the encyclopedic knowledge of the apricot.
I love that your mama expanded her knowledge beyond the one stop sign town to the exotic! Comforting poem.