Fall equinox - terre sicule

The myth of the seasons usually highlights the renewal of spring - stark contrast to the winter months. But in the southern Mediterranean, things are different. At this equinox, balance comes in unexpected ways.

What you call the end
Is the opening thrust:
Wild yeast charges the fruit
And the air is sour with must.
Jasmine blooms along stone walls,
White stars on prickly, furrowed fields
That sprawl, burlap-brown, in the bite of heat,
Bitter, craggy, water-starved.

The landscape is the medicine,
If you can stomach it.

Kore couldn't, but now returns
Because she felt wheat berries push
Into that earth, all acrid-red,
That soon will see a new green blush
Spread, and grow, and bring the bread.
She knows new wine will flow at last.
Ede, ede! Tachy, tachy!
Come now, come now.
Come fast, come fast.

Waterfowl, new moon

... with due respect to the loons ...

The great blue heron, so still, is like
a standing piece of driftwood, silver-gray cyan,
like when wood sees the pond water too long
and then, pushed up by a frost heave,
sun-bleaches and molders, gathering color.
Her neck feathers are fine grain exposed by years,
the pith and heartwood interweaving,
immobile, strong, fixed quiet to watch.

But when the neck coils down to spring
and wings open, stretching out tips
to catch sun rays in between,
you can feel the air compress
and watch her rise
as if a cord had lifted her from the granite
that lies half sunk beneath the glassy surface.

In my time I too
hope to rise that way,
fast and light and lifted,
not like the loons, who cry and flap,
and beat the water,
needing their slow, heavy ascent
to raise red eyes over the treeline.

Wasso beat

Rhythm courses blood red
In waves of morning clouds
Marked by cattle bells.
The day breathes hot and wide,
Shadows race across the hill
Until they tire into long blue threads.
Then the cows return, in line,
Brown and white and black,
Driven down the long cracked wash,
Dusted rusty red.

Should you feel lost

It's cold enough to start the car
ten minutes before
it's time to leave -
try to find an island of warmth
in the sharp, vast morning,
set aside respite as you
rush through,
scrape off soft, thin frost
as if it weren't a miracle

A Dram of Bitters

A little something to start the week. It comes from Rebecca Seiferle's excellent collection, called "Bitters", which holds poems that explore, and sometimes celebrate, the challenging times of life. And isn't it curious that, at these times, we as humans have turned to bitter herbs? Bitters are endemic. They are a part of us, as surely as we are a part of this green world. If you're traveling far afield this week, may your road shine clear before you. If you are finding comfort in the warmth of your own kitchen, may your hearth fire burn bright. Either way, may you taste sweet earth.

A Dram of Bitters
Rebecca Seiferle
originally published by Copper Canyon Press, 2001

"Bitters" are not bitter, are not
injurious, ancient instruments
of torture, cruel flavorings
of death, are not "the proper pain
of taste" (according to Bain, the baneful),
but a small bottle of bitters, a drop
or two, makes the orange juice brilliant
in a glass of gin and quiets
the stomach when it is unsettled
by true bitterness - whatever
in the world is "hard to swallow"
or admit, the crumb of cruelty
caught in one's craw, the iron bit
gnashing in one's teeth, the baleful
bile of "what has to be"
tasted to extremity.
Which is probably why
the British, intoxicated
in South America, copyrighted the recipe
into the colonial world
to try and make purgative,
a medicinal substance,
out of their own doubtful history,
caught between sour peevishness
and virulence of action
and of feeling - chugging the wild plenty
of the bitters down. But, no, bitters
is something more than "a noggin
of lightning, a quartern of gin." A secret
recipe distilled from the bark of the tree
of life, the original verb of an aboriginal sensitivity, the surviving
noun of a cloud canopy in Venezuela, the genealogy
of a mindful tribe, the undiscovered draught
of mercy - not extract of gentian
or quinine or wormwood, those Old World
poetic distillations - but something vegetable,
persistent, extending roots into the world.
An autochthonic brew. Who tastes it,
tastes sweet earth.

Eddies

A short stroll on a warm day in early winter. The white flowers of black hellebore. The push and pull leaves eddies.

When the sun grows weak, extinguished
By time too long spent in southern seas
And tricks you, who know the season
(The last squash rotting in the field,)
There still comes a prodigal warmth
That settles over the green,
Unlocks the frost,
And stills the coldest wind.
Set loose the scent of leaf-mould,
Flower Helleborus black,
The lovelies grace the forest path
As you pull back.

In Defense of Gluten

My daughter and I love making pasta. We start from scratch, and enjoy mixing the dough by hand, kneading it while we talk, and finally running it through the Imperia pasta machine to make lasagna sheets, noodles, or squares to stuff with filling. 
The recipe is pretty simple, adapted from my father's teaching and from the work of the late great Marcella Hazan. It can be scaled up for any size meal, or you can just make lots and store the dough balls in your fridge for a week or more, ready to dust with flour and roll out into beautiful sheets of pasta.

Take 1 cup all-purpose flour and make a "volcano".
In the hole of the "volcano", crack and beat 1 egg.
Add 1 TBS of olive oil, and 1 pinch of salt.
Add 2 tsp of water (or tomato juice, or nettle infusion). The water helps the gluten form properly.

To this basic template you can add rubbed sage, or chopped parsley, or calendula petals, or cuttlefish (sepia) ink. The possibilities are endless

Slowly incorporate the flour into the egg/oil/water mix. When it's mostly blended, start squishing the dough with your hands and fingers until it forms into a glossy ball (or multiple balls, if you're using more than 1 cup of flour). Keep kneading until the dough becomes elastic and supple.

Place the ball of dough in a plastic bag in the fridge for an hour or two, then take it out and cut in half. Press the dough into a flat pancake - and you're ready to feed it into the pasta machine!

The quality of the dough relies on a protein present in wheat, called gluten. I've been unable to achieve the stretchy quality of good pasta dough any other way. It's elastic, resilient, and can be rolled incredibly thin without tears or breaks thanks to the gluten polymer keeping everything "linked up". Part of what kneading accomplishes is to link many gluten molecules together to achieve this resilient "sheet" effect. I apologize if gluten offends your sensibilities (or you GI tract) - but it's really a beautiful thing.

The other day my daughter and I were admiring the thin sheets, looking at how the light from our western windows glowed through them, alabaster-like. She came up with some great similes to describe the fruits of our labor. I told her I'd steal her words - which led to a conversation about exactly what I meant by that, how one could "steal" words, what plagiarism is. Good stuff for a four-year-old. Regardless, here's my plagiarism in action. It's an ode to gluten.


Metal rolls thick dough
until, when held up
evening sun shines through it -
thin as a rabbit's ear,
silky and cool. We clear
flour off the pine board
and lay a long sheet out
thin as a petal.

Emile found his reading glasses

Tomorrow, before sunrise, we leave to return to America. I'm excited - I'm missing the Green Mountains. This has been an amazing month: slow, warm, and rich. I'm certainly very well fed. I leave these hills, lake, and mountains with another short poem inspired by a fellow guest staying in this old villa (the original cellar dates to around 300 C.E., we think).


Emile found his reading glasses

Perhaps propped against a stone -
yellow, pink, grey -
that had fallen from the old wall;
or left, half-open, in the dry grass
and fragrant mint and sage
because he'd gotten up too fast;
maybe in a crook in the roots
of a twisted olive, silver-green,
that matched the color of the frames:
the clear lenses disappeared into the land
where he searched all afternoon.
I didn't ask when, this morning,
they appeared
neatly folded, on a book
in a leather chair
by the window with the lake view.

Make it home

We part, from time to time,
and travel two roads in this green world.
I return first and find
the grass tall, the garden unruly,
the house quiet, an unfamiliar smell.
When I turn old, all I hope for
is the sight of you on the country lane
walking back
to make it home.