Poetry Friday: and you know this

-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