Cooking for my Daughter

Like her ancestral Bastet*,

the cat’s head barely moves
as he takes in the scene of me
mixing yeast and water, flour and salt.

This dough is for pizza,
a family staple that goes back
before my daughter’s birth,
a time I remember as if it were only a story
and of course, she does not remember at all.

She’s coming for lunch in a few hours.
This evolution in our lives
is like the day after the discovery of the wheel,
or the first summer after the domestication of wheat:
everything is different, but we’re not quite sure
what it all means just yet.

Later I punch down the risen dough
and roll it out.
I paint the surface with olive oil
then spread tomato sauce and cheese –
New World innovations
covering over Old.

* Bastet or Bast (Ancient Egyptian: bꜣstjt "She of the Ointment Jar", Coptic: Ⲟⲩⲃⲁⲥⲧⲉ[2] /ubaste/) was a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion, worshiped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BCE). Her name also is rendered as B'sst, Baast, Ubaste, and Baset.[3] In ancient Greek religion, she was known as Ailuros (Koinē Greek: αἴλουρος "cat").
Bastet was worshipped in Bubastis in Lower Egypt, originally as a lioness goddess, a role shared by other deities such as Sekhmet. Eventually Bastet and Sekhmet were characterized as two aspects of the same goddess, with Sekhmet representing the powerful warrior and protector aspect and Bastet, who increasingly was depicted as a cat, representing a gentler aspect.

chains

what have I been paying attention to 

that words won't come together now

like grade school children in a line

holding hands so that none of them 

get lost, or left behind.

Reading Aristotle's Politics

I am reading Aristotle’s Politics

at my kitchen table

with the morning light

spilling across my coffee.

I imagine the great philosopher

also at his kitchen table,

with a hard loaf of bread

and perhaps some olive oil,

considering whether there are

seven types of courts, or perhaps eight.

Light from the same sun

reflects off of the oil in its shallow saucer

and he pauses his logical progress

to think of Plato, some years gone.

This is not in the pages I am reading,

not directly, at least.

but my mind has been running

down the footpaths he first walked

and have since been trod by kings and monks

and all manner of forgotten readers.

By this miracle of written word

I am more inside his ordered psyche

than if he were sitting across from me

And asking me to pass the salt.

**

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/reading-aristotles-politics

or https://youtu.be/d27C8cGLKkA

on the subject of magic

While we're on the subject of magic
did you see the buds on the blueberry bushes
this morning with that particular angle
of the rising sun?
White petals smaller than fingernails
wrapped tight but ready with possibility.

Or - there was the way the shadows played
on the leaf strewn path
through the still bare branches
drawing lines of fate, fleeting.

There was also the brilliant eye of moon
rising over the roof
seeing into our hearts
and knowing.

Periphery

We’re there on the periphery watching from the outside. We keep learning the center is somewhere else, far away. First it was the surprise that mother existed outside of our needs, then the startling fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Now we peek through satellite images at the party we weren’t invited to from the fringes of the galaxy. We listen to radio waves that were broadcast a billion years ago eager to know if the cool kids looked our way, and maybe noticed us.

Blue Hour

There is a magic photographers know

called the Blue Hour - 

it exists after the casual sunset hunters 

have returned their phones to their pockets

after the last burn of gold has dissolved

over the trees and rooftops.

The Blue Hour begins

when you realize you've been reading in the dark

for twenty minutes and you finally flip on a light

and wonder about the nature of time.

There is a secret window of minutes

when true night has not settled in -

where, if you let your camera drink in

the moment for the count of ten, or twenty -

the sky above the glow in your window,

above the shining street lamps,

above the taxi break lights

and the neon signs -

the sky will reveal a secret - 

that it hides a queen's blue,

but you have to wait for it.

and it does not last.

On the Subject of Sidewalks and Portugal

The Ocean brings the ice in on tides

leaving shelves along the shore

like someone has demolished a sidewalk 

and left for lunch.

It's as though She changed Her mind

about letting us walk to Portugal,

as if that had ever really been Her intent.

A few more months of cold

while we all long to be in Portugal

walking on sidewalks along the beach -

sidewalks that have not been upturned

and piled on each other

like a forgotten construction site

in New Jersey.