Take your sorrow soup,
sour mash of sand
that slipped through
your mother’s hands on
days spent resenting a husband’s
regretful weakness.
Trickle in the salt from old
wounds, sprinkle an ounce
of onion tears over whatever meat
you can trim from the fat
on her old chopping block.
Stir in the shadow of the owl
that passes overhead
whispering that necessary question
who cooks for you?
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.
