Heat. A Hallucination

Saturday
At The Farmers' Market
"Heat!"
I wished myself away
to summer in Santa Fe!

I felt like a fish on ice,
water glazed and shock frozen
in a blast freezer,
not sure if whole or not.
Not that it matters,
once you are on ice
and exposed naked behind glass!

Steaming Hot Espresso?
I could not imagine
how to peel off my icy trappings
to sit down. And - chissà - if I were even
able to hold a comforting hot cup
with my gelida manina?*

I marched on,
to the clinkclank of the ice
jangling at every step
as it began to fall.
I passed the train station,
dreaming myself all the way to Santa Lucia,
emerging there into warm springlike air,
watching gondolas ride into the sunset
on Canal Grande.

I found myself
stepping into my warm kitchen instead,
wheighing the odds
of adding grated apples to
David's perfectly fine
Sugar Crusted Popover recipe. **

From my safe warm haven
I saw a bird
take off into the golden glow
of the setting sun.
Will it return
and bring along Spring?


* click to hear
Mario del Monaco sing the aria
"La tua gelida manina"
from Puccini's "La Bohème"

** Click for David's recipe

Yes,
adding one grated apple
and the zest of one lemon
made for very good popovers.
The picture's less so,
I had to turn it sepia
to make it bearable.

Images and Text
© by Merisi