flashes of silver
fish plash beneath clacking palms:
season of the fins
sweet budding branches:
brush back the flying darkness
comb through tangled stars
lavender shadows
ease across the evening sky:
waiting for the moon
The Refrigerator Called Life
I have a friend whose refrigerator resembles a surgical suite. Pristine and organized within an inch of its life, it’s perfectly stocked with every staple, main dish ingredient and culinary extra you could hope for.
In the door, condiments and dressings line up like grade-schoolers waiting for a class photo: tall ones in back, short ones in front. All of the dairy products are close at hand when the door swings open. If you’re looking for the cottage cheese, it’s there with the milk, just as it should be. Other cheeses live in a plastic container underneath the cottage cheese (no meat drawer for them!) and the yogurts are stacked just behind, according to flavor. Why it’s important to have all the raspberry yogurts together rather than intermingled with the lemon and dutch apple I’m not sure, but that’s the way it’s done in her refrigerator.
In my friend’s refrigerator, greens are always crisp, fruit never goes bad and you never, ever have to haul everything off a shelf to get to the bag of chocolate chips hidden in the back. (The fact that they’re hidden there to slow down the chocoholic who’d gotten into the habit of grabbing a handful now and then is beside the point. In her world, everything should be accessible, and the chip-grabber should learn a little discipline.)
I know my friend likes me too much to ever say a word, but I can see her nose twitching like a disapproving schoolmarm when she comes to visit. She opens the door to my little food haven with the trepidation of a spelunker in unfamiliar territory. If her refrigerator is a Shakespearean sonnet, mine’s an old issue of National Enquirer. The fact that I usually manage to avoid unidentifiable fuzzy things in plastic containers is a plus, but barely. From her perspective, things are out of control, and she’d be much happier if I established a little order. (more…)
