from what we cannot hold the stars are made
From the afternoon’s market in downtown Santa Cruz, I tossed corn kernels and split cherry tomatoes for a minute or so in a hot pan, sprinkled salt, minced garlic, and Parmesan on top, and seared large scallops like extruded new moons in the empty buttered pan.
A pulse of Lisbon lemon, also from today’s market, finished the simple summer dish,
and some time later, I let the Camembert sit out, and I pulled soft figs apart, dreaming of last week in France, spent in Nice and Cannes, yielding to the beautiful pace of the Mediterranean.
Adjusting the deck chair toward the late afternoon light, I read W.S. Merwin’s poem “Youth” from his stunning 2009 collection The Shadow of Sirius with a blue-tipped feather that fell into the pages from the tree branches above, if you can believe the magic that surrounds this quiet structure—
knowing that this magic is what the stars, now appearing above the cabin, are made from—as the final line of the poem (“from what we cannot hold the stars are made/”) suggests…
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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010, 11:20 pm * Filed in Food, light. * Tags: kristen, kthread, merwin, taylor. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
