Root Notion

Root Notion

The cat you can set your clock by scowls by the range;

On the warm sill a butterfly dreams of pillage;

The window spectrum tapestries her spread oilcloth;

In the milk jug’s blue bands the tossed sky swells;

We skirmish quietly in the blush of waking up;

Gran’s poker stirs the dust from the range’s red coals;

The mugs flow with the pouring music of brewed tea;

Eating porridge toast and fry takes no time at all;

Past, present, future fuse in every mouthful;

She speaks of Shifra and Puah, who disobeyed

The Pharaoh and kept the Hebrew newborns alive;

Her “another egg?” is really an insistence;

Saying no thank-you we thank her and go milking;

She opens her mouth wide but does not speak a word,

Like a bell that swings silently without a tongue;

We knew we had enough because she always gave

Us more than enough; she fed for posterity;

Just a life span from the dead her people mourned for,

She still felt down there deep in her past the hunger;

Her root-belief was all must live on full bellies;
Into her meals all the turns of day coalesced.