The Way We Light The Cottage

May 16, 2008 - 16:00 PM PST

I always enjoy the taste of soot
from your fingers when you return from the ovens.
You bake bread.
At home I would lick
your boots clean:
shine them, like the buckle of your belt
if you wanted.

Your eyes savor my rain soaked
cotton shirts when I return from the garden.
They cling to goose bumps when you pull them up;
our knees on the hearth.
I tend soil and seeds:
you nurture me
with similar methods
you warm my pride,
like the bread you rise everyday.
with your floured fists,
an oven to winter fingers,
with soil under every nail.

Girls love the taste of humility
and soot,
the way a man loves the secret
of heating up the greenest
of stubborn blue thumbs.