Wednesday, October 07, 2009

GENERATIONS OF KITCHENS

As I rush home with a store bought cake
I suddenly smell apple pie
Generations of older kitchens
Find me with stories to tell

The red velvet cake for my birthday
Smells like my teenage perfume
The grated lemons for the Chess Pie
Burnt cornbread that the birds ate

Being on my best behavior
So that I could sop the bowl
Nothing tasted better than pound cake
Raw and dripping down my chin

Cooking lessons all wrap around me
I sure learned more than I know
“Put the eggs in one at a time, dear”
Grandmother’s soothing sweet words

She poured bourbon over her fruitcake
I smell it like it was here
Christmas cookies and Christmas candies
Each one made with loving hands

My cake looks like cardboard with icing
Straight from an assembly line
No love, no thought, no cooking lessons
No aromas for me now

Ha! The time the roast burned in the oven
That stink lasted for three days
Covering now with the smell of bread
Fresh rolls with homemade butter

Warm hugs, laughs and flour on noses
Waft in on the breeze of now
As generations of kitchens share
Holding me true to their words

@2009 The above and all poems and pictures on this blog cannot be
reproduced on the World Wide Web or any other published form without
the written permission of the writer/creator at scarlet@rhymecreek.com

3 comments:

SunsetnFL said...

MJ, I love this one! Makes me think about when I was young and in the kitchen with my Mom. I should have paid more attention :) But we absorb more than we know at the time.

Scarlet said...

You are so right, we do absorb more than we know. But, like you, I wish I had paid better attention. I still enjoy having a "memory" pop up from a certain smell or picture or whatever that takes me back to my childhood and into a favorite kitchen!

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