Wednesday in CinCity. The Food is Life Edition.

This book finally! arrived in the mail and is now in my kitchen, the source of my new project for the summer  (let's be serious) the year. Chapter One: Soup, the Staff of Life and the first recipe--Potage Picard au Pois (split pea soup). The peas are soaking even as we speak. Not a fan of peas other than the frozen ones in the bag I put on an aching back now and again, but journeys begin with a single step and Hubby seems to like just about anything I cook, so split peas it is.

We're on Season 2 of Treme, though a bit scatter-rhompussed. Season 2 comes from the library in four different DVD's containing the eleven episodes and what has come in so far from the far reaches of the CinCity library requesting system are episodes 4, 5, & 6 as well as 10 & 11. What I know so far is that crime has returned to the Crescent City harder than before and people I've never seen before are somehow involved in this and the food and music are still fabulous, but struggling. Sounds about right. About 72 more hours before I see for myself in person.

I won't be here for June 16th and "Bloomsday," but happyhappy to all the James Joyce fan out there. I hope to return with stories of daring and adventure in my own walkabout a city.

Listening to the Garden

by Brendan Galvin




Look at it this way: under the brass fanfare

of their blossoms, all those zucchinis

are really incipient oompahs.

And the pea-vine tremolos? Middle C

rubbed out of a rhubarb stalk?



Now you're beginning to hear it: that line

of radishes ostinato, bean paradiddles,

a beefsteak tomato redballing its cadenza.



Aren't the parts of these vegetables—the phloem,

the calyx and carina—names of woodwinds

you'd love to hear, in counterpoint

with the garden's valves and bells?



Remember that morning you drove

into the main street of a town—Colorado Springs,

was it? - on no holiday you could name?



Nevertheless, the high-school band was passing,

majorettes in their short, flippant skirts

frilled like the inner linings of lettuce,

and shakos, corn-tassel plumed, remember,



and the frogging on jackets—cucumber vines

scrolled on themselves. The whole garden's

flash and patootle was moving off

toward a snowed-upon peak

down at the end of that street.