The Pots and Plates of Every Day

The Pots and Plates of Every Day

For my mother

Seventy-two labors brought us this food.
We should know how it comes to us.
—Zen Meal Chant

Gather round and share this meal
Your joys and your sorrows I make mine.
--The Gate of Sweet Nectar

I

The pot fills me with wonder.
Open and empty like the sky
it shares its upright heart.
It cannot turn away from hunger--
always its hand reaches out
like the sun or gusting wind.
No one is turned away--
it is born to serve.

Scorched black and cinnamon
on the bottom, and inside
scoured paths of shooting stars,
the pot’s sides glinting silver
like rain through sun in summer,
the wooden handle worn from
decades of dedicated work—
how radiant the pot awake
on the stove.

Sharing its mineral life with mountains,
the pot echoes their daring of distance after distance
and feeds the hungry in all realms.
The pot is pressed into service on stoves
in homes, hospitals, and prisons
or over campfires after a day’s trek
fleeing violence or drought.
Always moving toward the fire
the pot offers the warmth
and savor of being alive,
of sharing a meal.

Within the pot hot water for tea
or nutty oatmeal, earthy lentils or black
beans with garlic, steaming broccoli,
fragrant soups, sauteing onions,
boiling corn, or steeping broth.
The pot nurses us in health and illness,
putting food in the bellies of the wise
and foolish, the kind and unkind.
The pot’s extended hand will shake
any hand and give comfort.

Dinner is ready!

Come and receive the cosmos itself.
Within the pot not only vegetables
and grains but the earth and sky
that grew them—the red sun of summer,
the sheening rains of autumn,
the embrace of snow bearing eons
of silence and absence, the revelations
of moonlight with plants like oceans waving
in leaf-tide and the spring star Altair
illuminating and enriching the soil,
mentored by a chilled earthworm,
who imparts its brilliance then snugs
up to an onion bulb and falls asleep.
The joyful pot holds the whole of life.

II

The pot sees clearly what needs
to be done but it cannot provide solace
alone. Another, sleeves rolled up,
must take its hand for cooking to begin.
The pot lives by grace and gleams
like the moon by reflected light
patient and mysterious
on the white stove of everyday life.

The wooden spoon on the counter,
the pot’s companion, open as a palm
and like the pot, reaching out,
must also wait for another.
More ancient than fork or knife
and more kind, the slender spoon
lathed from beech and lightly stained
with turmeric glows with invention,
never weary, making the meal--
offering its dance to the pot and
joining hands with its partner.
Close by, knobs of garlic nod delight
and sinuous salt and pepper
sentinels gather their wits.

The pot’s eternal calling is imbued with humor—
it is after all only a pot, and unadorned,
disappearing into service. Laughing at itself
the pot calls out to those in need
of conversation and laughter
to keep their meals warm.

III

Meet a few of the cooks.

A cashier at a casino who lost
her job fixes dinner for her girls
a soup her mother made--fried pasta shells,
tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and water.
The younger child sets out a bowl and
spoon for her dreadlocked doll who loves
the ceremonies of daily life.

Thinning gray hair, hazel eyes,
masked, he boils spaghetti in huge pots
in a hospital kitchen for staff caring
for Covid patients. Outside, a refrigerated
truck serves as neighborhood morgue.
Seeing faces spent beneath
shields, he bows his head
and weeps.

A boy named Lucky, youngest of four,
breaking from his online class,
stirs a simple syrup for lemonade.
Ill with cancer, his mother reads aloud
the recipe and watches lemons roll
like small suns across the long maple counter
in that never-ending moment with her son.

Fleeing drought, crops ruined,
they stop for a break on the outskirts
of a town after finding no food
and boil water for coffee.
Backpacks for pillows,
he, his wife, and their girl Rosa
rest before resuming their route,
hoping for food tomorrow.
Their life on the road toward life
consists only of tomorrows.

A man at Eastham, a Texas prison,
prays for the well-being of the cook
who heated his green beans and hot dog.
That’s better than some folks get.
But the cockroaches—
I know them have joys and sadness,
he says, coaxing one to leave his cell.
But wrong house, go next door
he tells her. Sh-h-h-h-h!
Dakota don’t need to know.

Late at night an older woman scoops
water from her basement as sleet
batters the house. A sleeve on her
knee since the last hurricane.
Another storm brewing.
The swaying bulb blinks out--
light is exhausted too--
she says and feels her way upstairs.
She makes out the pot waiting
on the stove. Maybe creamed
spinach in the morning?

At the shelter a man cleaning a pot
watches as the men eat their oatmeal
then begin to go separate ways.
The last to leave, a carpenter, his tools
stolen from his truck, then the truck
stolen.  Carrying a frayed blanket,
he hunts for cardboard to sleep
on at night. Just help me,
he prays. Ok? Just a little.

Somewhere in heaven Miss Cissy
cooks chicken stew for her son George.
You were there for me, he says.
I heard you call out—I’m not far away.
I put fresh sheets on your bed.
George, before we eat offer a prayer.
Dear God thank you for our breaths
which nothing can extinguish
and for this hearty food.
They gaze out over the many hands
stretching down to connect with
the hands of those jailed and those still
marching, until they finally return
home and heat leftovers for dinner.
Cissy smiles at her son George Perry.
Please pass the stew, he says.

IV

Distressed that many have little food,
the pot sighs an endless aspiration to feed everyone--
the scared, the left behind, those alone,
the families in line in cars for hours for food,
those without cars or meals,
their frightened children,
ICU patients starved for life,
others starved for love or justice,
and the ravaged planet itself.

Intensifying its efforts the pot unfolds
its thousand arms, praying that sustenance
for everyone be expanded beyond measure.
Shaking its hand we shake hands
with everything that is and together
rest on the stove's coiled lightning.
The pot fires its iron roots--stars
combusting into being after the big bang—
both heaven and earth heat the green beans
and the chicken stew and all the bountiful food.

V

Near the window on the white counter
the pot recuperates with friends
in the early morning. Listening
like a valley, the pot fills with bird song
and sleeping cicadas begin to dream.
And the sounds of pebbles alive--
their pebble hands shining with
the enduring strangeness of clouds.

And inside, from the cutting board
with incised verticals like pouring
rain a soothing thrumming.
From the green ancestral branches
of the spoon rustlings above
the forest floor just waking up.
The kitchen walls in lacquered
shadow sing by gleaming.
The hint of songs of pots
and pebbles, cutting boards, and spoons.

Just when we do not speak but slip free
of thinking and sentience
we begin to hear the inconceivable
music of the insentient—
their no striving after movement or gain,
the elegance of nothing extra
in a world addicted to more,
their ebullient service to life and
wondrous receptivity to being,
their beyond human teaching.
This silence of wisdom and ease
emanates from the pot and its friends
near the patio and in the small
kitchen in the early morning.

VI

I watch bubbles skip above the singing
water, pot ablaze, as steam rises
framing my face. With ready intent
and hungry, I pour lentils into the reeling
cauldron then seize the comet spoon and stir.
The woman feeding her family pasta soup
and the man in solitary eating his beans
and praying for the cook—how are they?
I cover the simmering pot and wait.

A great mix of ingredients is poured
into pots around the world. Magnanimous
as the ocean the pot welcomes everything,
receiving the bounty wholeheartedly.
In this day-to-day life on a minor spiral arm
of the Milky Way which houses our
little corner of Earth and sun and stars,
I soon uncover the pot then sit down
to my lunch of lentils and thyme.

VII

Seeing the pot reach out we see who we are
and at once reach out to those who hunger in any form.
We reach out to the anguished, the struggling.
We reach out to workers without work
freezing at home without heat or prospect.
We reach out to the old dying without
touch or the gaze of a familiar face.
We reach out to dying rhinos, red wolves
and wetlands lost to condos.

As we reach out we see that others
are also reaching out, bestowing gifts.
Why had we not seen this before?

The drift of seas affirms the drift of seasons.
The mountains of Earth fade into emptiness
shoring up the mountains of Mars. Our warm stoves
revive our wider home, our warm bridge
of stars. Shadows laugh, they are light
at play in unceasing creation.

VIII

All of life affirms life and possiblity--
even the virus quickens compassion.
Is there anything that is not alive and
utterly generous? Braided as one
insentient and sentient, indistinguishable.
We throw open doors and floors, tear off the roof
pull down the open sky and let life stream in.
We are the pots, the pebbles, and the poise
of cutting boards, and they are us--
the oneness of our ordinary life
originating in the stars.

IX

Together we prepare the supreme meal
for each other, holding nothing back.
We call forth even our fears and darkness,
our failures to shelter as a blade of grass
shares shadows and a hill its loneliness.
With courage and kindness like the pot
we sustain and encourage life.

Whatever food satisfies our longings
whatever succor the flower or street requires
we offer and receive from one another.
Quiet in mystery, our timeless origins
ignite the light and code of life, embedding
in the DNA of every emerging cell of
our vast connected life compassion.
We are the love the universe pours into us
and into the pots and plates of every day.

We take our places at the table.
Even the freshening wind sits down with us.
We dine on a feast of every taste and fragrance.
Led by birds, songs flare praising this meal of meals
which answers every thirst and hunger.
As we savor the best wine from the Big Dipper
perfectly aged over billions of years, we share
our joys and sorrows and deep gratitude.
Laughter rises like a fountain of shining water.

                                                                   The unsurpassable peace of pots

_

________

Susan KōDō Efird
early spring 2021
Copyright © 2021 Susan L. Efird