-and you know this-
Have you ever eaten a cob of corn
cold, wrapped up the day before
because you couldn’t bear to throw away
such goodness, even though–and you know this–
corn is never the same
the day after.
You unwrap it anyway,
don’t heat it, don’t salt it, don’t butter it, don’t even
sit before you bite. Not much taste–you knew that–but oh!–
how crisp!–like raw snow–and you remember
your mother, lecturing produce
clerks on why the thinnest ears were the sweetest,
and how she shucked each ear
at the store, just to be
sure, and
rubbing–this was your job–the stubborn silk
from those ears before they were plunged
into boiling water laced
with a tablespoon of sugar and
sticking little wooden skewers
like shark’s teeth into the ends
of the cob, so as not to burn
your fingers and
rolling the corn over a whole
stick of butter, melting
corn tracks into its back–
bad manners–but your mother
allowed it, and
eating the corn in pre-counted rows, or messy
patchwork fashion, or round and round
like a buzz saw, or in races
with your brothers, and
fishing the trash
later for the one lost
skewer and (much later)
growing your own corn in a miniature
matrix of a garden in New Mexico
and your daughter baptizing
herself in the dirt as you stroked the emerging
tassels of finger-thin cobs and
marveling that night at her breath,
which as she slept, was the exact scent of new
corn, and how you were high on it, inhaling
in the dark, and finally, you remember
that you are eating this
cold ear of corn,
not heated, not buttered, not salted,
but straight, like vodka,
and it feels like a dangerous act
as if it were forbidden–
and you know this–
to eat corn this way. You resist
kissing it before
you begin.
----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)
Poetry Friday is hosted this week by
The Book Mine Set
