I touch, with a certain reverence, this loaf of cinnamon bread,
sitting on my stove. Admire its regular browned form, and I smile.
This, after the rush of reunion; husband back from family’s bosom,
Wisconsin father’s last sibling had died. Which, strangely,
brought fresh breath into descendent families lives.
Paths diverge, in maturity; sweet memories are lies of Now,
and truths of Then. Challenges collapse family spirits.
Equanimity resides while death collects new lives. I taste,
with total actuality, the cookies I consumed in that first delight,
baked fifteen hundred miles away. I taste … his loving mother,
my superior in almost all ways, except convolution of mind.
Hers steady, mine sublime. She is a dame of industrious merit.
I taste Wisconsin’s summer, and their camping trips, and fishing,
pontoons and sunshine, grandchildren laughing and running wild and free. I flush with firepit's sheltering father, who watched over me
in my passed-out sleep on a lawn chair and covered me with a blanket,
once, a year ago. This family, where you never want to sleep,
can’t, really, or they’ll filch your bra and tie it in a tree, or pose you
with a Barbie doll, and take pictures that will be passed around
at future gatherings. I remember pots of coffee in the kitchen,
family and friends stopping by to see us, and give us their love.
Staying up late, drinking, shot for shot with my husband’s brothers. Waking up groggily, knowing that my girls were safe and cared for
in that beautiful land with that beautiful family.

All in the taste of his mother’s cookies…

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen
© Copyright 8/18/04