On, In, and Around Mondays: Kitchen Table Optional
I usually write on Saturdays, but this past weekend I found myself in the car for a total of seven hours. Four up (we missed our turn and accidentally pointed towards Canada) and three back.
As the miles passed, I watched snow. Snow, snow and more snow. Snow on orchard trees and baby pines, on Douglas Firs and golden swamp weeds, on russet-colored bushes and mountains in the distance.
For all the daylight hours I watched, and never tired of the snow.
Later, returning in the dark, I watched the sliver moon diffused behind clouds. Now the snow was blues and grays, barely glowing, and the mountains were a suggestion against the night. If I could have walked the 150 miles home, I would have. The moonlit snow was an endless invitation to awe.
Somewhere along the way I got to thinking about Capon's (and Ann Kroeker's) Heavenly Onion. I know our lives do not permit this kind of attention for every task. But there are moments when we have an hour (or seven), and then we have a chance to be in awe over snow, or an onion, or the soft face of a person we love. I thought about this too, and wrote a poem (probably just along where we missed the turn— and now you see how awe can derail a day, so you must be prepared for that eventuality).
Anyway. I was thinking of Capon's instructions, but I was without an actual onion or a kitchen table. So, as I said, I wrote a poem instead.
Says Capon...
Now take one of the onions (preferably the best looking), a paring knife, and a cutting board and sit down at the kitchen table... You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that...
Assignment (Kitchen Table Optional)
Spend an hour with an onion—
Spanish if you like—
feel it round in your hand
before you uncover it
against itself...
knife slicing, piercing
towards the heart
through paper, water, paper, water,
releasing heat
that could make a grown man
cry.
---
On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.
If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)
We're reading The Spirit of Food together at TheHighCalling.org. Join us? Also, we're accepting poems (random is fine if you don't want to write for the prompt); mine today is random. :)
Labels: Leslie Leyland Fields, The Spirit of Food, thehighcalling.org, travel
posted by L.L. Barkat at 8:00 AM
12 Comments:
Oh, you. And I don't know why, but even this poem about an onion makes me cry.
I simply have to get a hold of myself. I think I need to go to the dr. and get my hormone levels checked.
Lovely. So glad to have found your blog.
The poem is so wonderfully restrained. But best of all, I love this idea:
"Awe can derail a day, so you must be prepared for that eventuality"
So love all that snow. Ours dried up between Christmas and New Year and we've been enduring cold rain on-and-off ever since.
Also, just can't get the link to show up properly on my blog?
Your post, and your poem, remind me of a meditation exercise I once did, which entailed eating a single raisin and spending a whole lot of time savoring and experiencing the sensation, taste, touch, smell, etc. of it. It was interesting -- very revealing. Of course I didn't stick with the meditation part of it...but the exercise was cool.
I am in awe today, and have much thinking and savoring and pondering to do. Not sure it's going to involve and onion. Or a kitchen table. Thank you for the invitation to link, once again.
Beautiful words as always - you inspire me to breathe deep...
So glad you got to enjoy snow reveries. You didn't come up with a poem about reveries, resting places, and snow? hmmm. Awe crept up on you so you cried like an onion, eh?
Guess you did get some resting done in that you fulfilled your love of writing poetry!
Once again, Laura, my link to "On Mondays" says the page not found, then at the right says to connect to my blog, click, and clicking brings up "One Day at a Time." Sorry.
I should have used the button, but was unsure of how that worked, also. I just copy over the a href statement and it automatically produces a clickable button? Duh!
I like writing in community. We look at the topics and themes from so many different angles.
You went straight for the heart.
For the tears.
There is much to ponder in, on and around onions...even though I sliced (and eventually diced) it, I've only barely scratched the surface.
You almost make me miss snow.
I don't have a copy of the book, but just reading the posts gives me much to think about.
I thought all that thinking about an onion might be a bit of a stretch for me, but I do love your poem!
That was so real--I was both crying from the words as well as from cutting through the onion by the end. And thinking of my husband's response to cutting an onion.
Love the snow.
You know I like to think about Capon's onion. Even more his mushroom, "It is proof of creation ex nihilo, the paradigm of the marvelously solid unnecessariness of the world". I love your sequel on his theme.
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