Long Day's Eyes

"The sage in his attempt to distract the mind of the empire seeks urgently to muddle it." – Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching












July 30


Late evening, sun an orange cloth
laid out over the bay
and this way, out among
fish splash, a last warmth
and here comes neighbor
pulling down his kayak
to the beach slowly folding
into shape his lifejacket
looking out of long day's
eyes all covered in numbers
raised voices to the office.
Who am I but Lao Tzu's
silly old sage really – always
thinking the mindpot
through, casting out what
to do, who does it, why.
Pontoon boats tied to docks
hover cheerily so unknowing
over on the other side of bay.
A sort of cartoon of beauty
now laying there for the take.
The grass over on this side
groomed as a golf course.
Neighbor paddling perfectly
stabbing at the silver,
the orange, the blue green
that laps up along side.
Tomorrow he wishes
he'd not decided to forty
years ago to live without
the world at his side.

As the River and the Sea
are to Rivulets and Streams

"Only when it is cut are there names.
As soon as there are names
One ought to know that it is time to stop.
Knowing when to stop one can be free from danger.
The way is to the world as the River and the Sea are to
rivulets and streams. " – Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching









Too fine a day.
To waste on details, detritus
to clean up every crack
of the courtyyard
out back – itself now aglow without my help,
first thing that comes
to mind is not more of this
more of that, but subtraction of things,
pull out a few bricks
relearn love of earth again,
get hands wet,
and so set kayak
up on my back and walk
across the green
to old friend Yahara
plumb and ripe – a flowing fruit.

and paddle over boatswell rivulets
to Starkweather Creek
where old bridges span
over duckweed wraps,
motors like choking lions
spin off the landing docks
black carbon swirls
up through the unknowing
giddy leaves of cotton trees.

I look into the neighborhoods
to either side of the creek.
Old houses asleep.
Cars twenty years old
at ready outside back doors.
Garbage cans at curbs.
Hiding up in a little muddy
cover of river bend ahead
little family of city ducks
line up at the breast wings
of ma and pa

and don't move into phosphorous
water until
the giant blue floating leaf
passes ten feet by

not a trace
of me
left

Another Day Has Come

"Another day has come,
Another fabulous escape from the damages of night,
So even the gulls, in the ragged circle of their flight,
Above the sea's long lanes that flash and fall, scream
Their approval..." – Mark Strand, from "A.M."










We could just as easily guage our terror
by how the lightening had begun to spear
down over the darkening bay, itself lit
like such a black mirror struck by jagged fissures,
for aren't they so indiscriminate as to tease
us away from any knowing of what is to come;
now, this is no longer a childhood of weather.
I remember that clandestine meadow
once lured me into its own innocent
auditorium as if by a Circe's fleshy fingers
and most of me then felt of the meadow:
a buzzing above the pollinators soaked
by a motherhood of sunshine so pure
as to wipe away every single lingering fear.
I remember the stolid blue bays of Superior
how they too sent out a sort of hand
to knowing, the ancient rocks surrounding,
buoying up the docked tankers which had
made its own course journey over mere
lake waves and I had come to its secrecy,
those scenes which have lasted forever.
The lightening had come and hovered
over our lives for the stretch of hours,
it knows nothing, it does not strive or repent.
When the world first too breath we wonder
if this was one of the scenes. Look inward.

Learning to Cook Alone

"Any oyster stew is made quickly, about as fast as the hand can follow the mind or the mind the eye. Oyster soup takes longer, can cost much or little, and pleases some people even more than it bores others." – Fisher, from "Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup"





What you might gain by cooking for one is the simple rerouting of the signals of hunger directly to what results on the plate. What you lose is nothing less than the reverse – as you cook for others, your own hunger is set aside and refashioned somewhere in the food imagination where you do your damndest to picture how so and so might enjoy the dish you are preparting. One satisfied the vanity of the individual taste, the other, if done well, satisfies the tastes of a variety of mouths. In a perfect cooking world, of course, these two seemingly stray phenomenon merge and the restauranteur, for example, or the good home cook, as another example, prepares simultaneously for just what he or she would love to eat, and only the praiseworthy eyes of the other eaters will tell the tale. This might all sound a little overly philosophical they are ideas that come to mind as so many of us home cooks lose a few mouths due to one reason or another.

Last evening I had decided on scallops and a cream corn concoction – a very simple recipe really, essentially a surf and vegetable combination that didn't need much flare, but it was a recipe that I had chosen for myself because it looked tempting in the magazine and I could just about taste the perfectly browned and cooked scallop, a fine art onto itself as most of us who tried cooking the scallop can attest. It's also a meal that might have been predominantly pushed aside on the plate in the past as three daughters, without any doubt, would have poked, prodded, and smelled the scallops for a few moments, surrounded by a cream corn which advertised bits of red onion and even clips of basil, another potent aroma not always craved by youth.

Even for myself, I wanted to take the essence of the ingredients and cook it all in the way that I would like to eat it. I would pull out a few past tricks for the scallops first – not exactly a revelation for anyone who has dropped a scallop on an overly hot pan, not properly oiled, and proceeded to watch the most sensitive skin stick so severely to the bottom that the scallop becomes, before you know it, half its original size. I decided to use my cast iron this time around, not copper, which is notorious for fast hot heat and needs the most attention of any pan type that I own. The cast iron heat is a fascinating one – it is deep and long, and the many little bumps of its surface can serve as a way to avoid the sticking properties of smoother metal. Pat away all the moisture of scallop, drop them down onto a medium heat and give them a swirl before the initial sticking. I flicked pinches of southwestern spice over the tops and let the first side go long enough to picture a browning along the bottom without blackening and an invisible heat to rise up through the bottom half.

For the corn, I used frozen corn instead of cutting away kernels from the cob. First, diced red onion to sautee in another pan, then the frozen corn, and enough evaporated milk to cover. I wanted to picture how much time it might take for the milk to tighten the corn; then a few cut vine ripened tomatoes, plus salt and pepper. I realized then that I had a fine base that I could easily transfer over the scallops into to finish out any cooking that was necessary. No need for basil, parsely, or anything else. I began to see it all as a sort of stew. That was not what the recipe was called, but how I began to see how I might like it. My scallops came up clean off the pan. I gave them a gentle prod in their middles – nobody likes a scallop that has the beatiful venner of a perfectly cooked bi valve, but then is cool in the middle. These are some of the cooking zones that probably persuade some eaters against the scallop – rubbery potential, lost skin due to too high of initial heat, uncooked middle. In the end, I wanted to test to see whether any other cooking method could beat grilling on aluminum foil, a technique that is very hard to mess up and so one of the more common.

Scallop essence commingled with a strengthening taste coming out of the corn, onion, milk combination, which began to boil up, congeal, and I knew that the scallops by this point were likely cooked through from the moist heat. I quickly dished. A touch of salt, a scratch of pepper, a wonderful compliment. I can't claim chemical expertise with anything that I cook but I will always vouge for the common eye to stomach test. This time it told me that the textures of the soft muscle of the scallop and the semi-sweet crispness of corn kernels, draped by a milk base, might hold well. I'm not one to over indulge on scallops – they usually find a place on the table once every three months, but I was easily able to eat four large, the corn underneath a nice stew. I told myself that I was satisfied the self responded back that that was it had intended from earlier in the morning when the recipe first flashed on the page. Another part of me wondered if anyone else would have eaten such a thing.