Chocolate Sauce and Honey and Salt

I have lived my life like an outsider - outside the bell jar - pretty much the most of it.  Never feeling at peace in my own skin.  Second guessing and wishing I had picked the door that has just now closed and locked itself forever.  But poetry.  yes.  I got it.  I got what the poet was saying usually at once and if not  - on the second reading  - that sigh - YES - Yes - yes.  yes.  I was always a Bloomsbury girl - Elliot and Woolfe and Lawrence and my dear sweet E.M.  But Sandburg and Walt.  oh.  my.  They took me to my core.  And it was Tim who brought Chuck into my life and he was like the dirty uncle you didn't want to know but you liked the way he rolled his cigarettes and were facinated by him. 

Poetry doesn't sell.  Unless it's amazing.  Strike that.  UNIVERSAL.  It just doesn't.  It's not the girl who kicked anything or had a tattoo - it's a poem.  But like a great sauce that you put on your ice cream. It can be great or just meh. 

And it may be great because it is from you or meh from a can or jar.  Or great because your daughter wanted to buy a chocolate cookbook at the used bookstore and you did buy it for her and then went to the store to buy the ingredients and then you made it together.  I am learning in my 41 spins on planet earth that as a mother just being alive doesn't cut it.  Just showing up isn't it.  If you want your kids to be engaged you have to bring your A game for who THEY are.  Not who you want them to be or who you think they should be.  I am NOT a model mom.  I suck so bad and so often it's not funny - but I do actually try.  I think.  a lot.  Who do I want to be as a mom, wife, woman, human, lover, person, citizen - cook, poet -  etc . . . .?

The chocolate sauce that is going on our ice cream is so simple but Trinity and I made it because it was her inspiration.  It's good in the natural but Great in the RELATIONAL.  Enjoy and following is Sandburg's Honey and Salt.  One of my all time favorite poems.  Because I love it and it's GREAT in the relational!

Chocolate Sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 t cinnamon
3 TBS of strong coffee or espresso

bring to a boil and boil for about 5 minutes
turn off heat and add half a bag of chocolate chips
1/3 cup whipping cream
and 3 TBS coffee liquor (Kahlua is the best but not cheap)

whisk like mad to melt the chips - if it seizes (sp) up do not fear.  keep whisking - it will let go and be lovely.  serve over coffee ice cream or vanilla - a can of whipped cream can be great too - add what you will to make it your own  cherries - banana's too - but it's good if you do it with your people whilst they don't hate you :D - I personally know I have nanosecond's before I am the antichrist with my kids!



Honey and Salt


Carl Sandburg



A bag of tricks—is it?

And a game smoothies play?

If you’re good with a deck of cards

or rolling the bones—that helps?

If you can tell jokes and be a chum

and make an impression—that helps?

When boy meets girl or girl meets boy—

what helps?

They all help: be cozy but not too cozy:

be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so:

then forget everything you ever heard about love

for it’s a summer tan and a winter windburn

and it comes as weather comes and you can’t change it:

it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came

and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands—

and nothing can be done about it—you wait and pray.

Is there any way of measuring love?

Yes but not till long afterward

when the beat of your heart has gone

many miles, far into the big numbers.

Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection?

All three—along with moonlight, roses, groceries,

givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings,

keepsakes and room rent,

pearls of memory along with ham and eggs.

Can love be locked away and kept hid?

Yes and it gathers dust and mildew

and shrivels itself in shadows

unless it learns the sun can help,

snow, rain, storms can help—

birds in their one-room family nests

shaken by winds cruel and crazy—

they can all help:

lock not away your love nor keep it hid.

How comes the first sign of love?

In a chill, in a personal sweat,

in a you-and-me, us, us two,

in a couple of answers,

an amethyst haze on the horizon,

two dance programs criss-crossed,

jackknifed initials interwoven,

five fresh violets lost in sea salt,

birds flying at single big moments

in and out a thousand windows,

a horse, two horses, many horses,

a silver ring, a brass cry,

a golden gong going ong ong ong-ng-ng,

pink doors closing one by one

to sunset nightsongs along the west,

shafts and handles of stars,

folds of moonmist curtains,

winding and unwinding wisps of fogmist.



How long does love last?

As long as glass bubbles handled with care

or two hot-house orchids in a blizzard

or one solid immovable steel anvil

tempered in sure inexorable welding—

or again love might last as

six snowflakes, six hexagonal snowflakes,

six floating hexagonal flakes of snow

or the oaths between hydrogen and oxygen

in one cup of spring water

or the eyes of bucks and does

or two wishes riding on the back of a

morning wind in winter

or one corner of an ancient tabernacle

held sacred for personal devotions

or dust yes dust in a little solemn heap

played on by changing winds.

There are sanctuaries holding honey and salt.

There are those who spill and spend.

There are those who search and save.

And love may be a quest with silence and content.

Can you buy love?

Sure every day with money, clothes, candy,

with promises, flowers, big-talk,

with laughter, sweet-talk, lies,

every day men and women buy love

and take it away and things happen

and they study about it

and the longer they look at it

the more it isn’t love they bought at all:

bought love is a guaranteed imitation.



Can you sell love?

Yes you can sell it and take the price

and think it over

and look again at the price

and cry and cry to yourself

and wonder who was selling what and why.

Evensong lights floating black night water,

a lagoon of stars washed in velvet shadows,

a great storm cry from white sea-horses—

these moments cost beyond all prices.



Bidden or unbidden? how comes love?

Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow,

a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle

or a sash of light in a blue fog,

a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist

or a deep smoke winding one hump of a mountain

and the smoke becomes a smoke known to your own

twisted individual garments:

the winding of it gets into your walk, your hands,

your face and eyes.