when i was a cook in a hippy commune...

I made shepherds pie for a whole community
from our own frozen corn and potatoes whose peels, a couple of visitors threw in the compost.
We wiped dark soil from the long oak counter.
We had ground turkey in the walk-in freezer, down by the offices, where I loved to shop for free.
The large dysfunctional family, worn nerves rubbing hard to the surface.
Later, me, swollen with stress in the morning.
The guys came in from logging, filthy and flirtatious and laughing but most of all greedy for the reward of food. Muscular, sweating, tree-limb legs; a man I wouldn't marry because his body was too large and his mind too small and his touch too light for my Mediterranean taste,
had dance me, standing stocking-clad upon his feet, around the huge country kitchen.

Twenty odd years later and I do mean odd,
I lie down with my mate, after lunch.
and I know he will not make love with me, for fear of losing the day.
But I have nothing to loose; am no longer confused by the pressures of light
or depressed by quiet, draping darkness.

Back in the commune we took love when we wanted (or so I thought it love, then).
Today I know better and cuddle less.
Affection was nourishing like shepards
pie for thirty.

I live more carefully now, choosing what I can use throwing out the potato peels,
their skins might nourish the earth instead,
I will not have the big guy today or tonight or tomorrow.
I want a meal I can digest and most of all
that when I'm done making food or making love
that someone will sweep up the floor.

Today I can no longer wade through the pile of remnant lives called community, where we huddled together, more hungry than our hurts could ignore.