Rosebush

I've lately been looking to poetry for perspective and have a couple of good sources in Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry columns and the Poetry Unbound podcast that Uncle Clint recommended. I don't have the patience for most podcasts, but the Poetry Unbound episodes are only about 8 to 10 minutes each (and some shorter than that). In his fine Irish brogue, the poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama reads, and comments on, a single poem in each episode. The first 16 episodes have all been worthwhile, but I particularly enjoyed the fifth episode on Tracy K. Smith's exquisite poem "Song."

Dylan also unwittingly introduced me to the Spoken Word Poetry (isn't all poetry "spoken word poetry"?) of Rudy Francisco through his 2017 volume Helium. I can't say the book as a whole did much for me, but I did relate to the poem “Ouch,” in which the poet injures himself just walking and muses that “At this age, / my body is a stranger that I / keep meeting over and over again. / The words ‘I am’ are slowly transforming / into ‘I used to be.’” Here is Francisco reciting the whole poem (it only lasts a minute):



But take a look at this dude! I looked it up and he was only thirty-five when “Ouch” was published. Good grief, Rudy, wait till you see what life has to offer when you're fifty-five.

*********

Rosebush


My running peaked at fifty,
through the alchemy of age-grading,
till I tore my right hamstring in 2014.
The left one followed three years later.
From a young fifty to a cascade of complaints:
arthritic spine;
a chestful of grief;
a shoulder stabbing in the night (though I haven’t
thrown the horsehide in anger since I was ten);
the accumulating allergies, democratically covering
all seasons and places, inside and out—
Dust mites (the terrible D. pteronyssinus,
like some microscopic dinosaur up my nose),
spring white oak, fall common ragweed,
wasp, yellow jacket, yellow hornet, and
the white- or bald-faced hornet (D. maculata),
to match the bald spot Cassie pointed out in my
otherwise still thick, albeit more gray than not, hair,
mocking me in snapshots taken from the back.

The other day I sat on our bedroom floor,
pressing tissues to a toe on each foot, to stanch
the blood pooling around my just-clipped nails.
K stopped and looked, curious.
“I gotta lot of thorns in my side,” I sighed.
“That just makes you a rosebush,” she replied.
I’m certainly prickly, and maybe
abscinding more abruptly than I’d like.
Do my fallen petals smell like sautéed onions, or
the toasted oatmeal in a warm chocolate chip cookie?

*********

If you're wanting a warm and comforting bowl of soup made from nothing but one onion and a bunch of pantry staples, look no further. This won't win any soup cook-offs, but it's still tasty and ridiculously easy to make with 15 minutes or less of work. We all liked it, except for Cassie, who is the outlier in our lentil-crazy family and hasn't yet warmed up to our beloved legumes.

Greek Lentil Soup

Adapted from The Greek Slow Cooker (2019) by Eleni Vonissakou via Food52

Time: 15 minutes, plus 5 to 6 hours cooking time

I served this with a loaf of homemade Spelt Soda Bread, which you can easily throw together during the last 45 minutes that the soup is cooking. The recipe is from a Greek slow cooker cookbook, so feta is the only cheese called for, but we only had cotija on hand, which is a Mexican cheese that can stand in for feta in a pinch. If you don't have a slow cooker, you should be able to make this on the stovetop in a covered stockpot set over low to medium-low heat so the soup cooks at the barest simmer until the lentils are as described in step 2.

1 pound/454 grams large brown lentils (I used a plain bag of Goya)
945 grams (4 cups) hot vegetable broth or stock
945 grams (4 cups) hot water
1 medium onion (~170 grams), cut into ¼-inch dice
40 grams (3 tablespoons) olive oil
15 grams (1 tablespoon) tomato paste
1 bay leaf or ⅛ teaspoon laurel bay leaf powder
1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To serve 

Red-wine vinegar

Feta (or cotija) cheese

Crusty bread (see note) 

    1. Measure/weigh all of the ingredients except the serving items into the insert of a 6- to 7-quart slow cooker (see note). Stir until well combined.
    2. Set the slow cooker to Low, and cook until the lentils are very soft and starting to fall apart; this is well past how you would ordinarily cook green or brown lentils to be al dente. The original recipe says 6 to 7 hours, but it took less than 5 hours on Low to get there in my old Rival Crock-Pot® (I've since upgraded to a better model), though the lentils were still fine at the 6-hour mark when the bread was done.
    3. Remove the bay leaf. Ladle the soup into individual serving bowls. Serve with a splash or two of red-wine vinegar, a good crumble of feta cheese, and crusty bread on the side. Serves 6.