Ode to a Cantaloupe

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Ode to a Cantaloupe

Ripe woman

so long in the sun,

skin thick, leathery, with veins

etched like filigree scars

of knowing,

one flat cheek

where you listened

to the earth,

I feel for you

among the rock hards,

fingertips perching, alert

on heads, searching

for you alone,

who have begun to return

inside to the waters

of yourself,

retreating slightly

at the meridians

that circle like rivers

to enter you.

With simple hope,

I carry you home

tucked in my elbow,

sweet

mystery.

On the board

on the table,

at the horizon

of the knife, heavily,

with a groan,

you fall open, glistening —

Rippling sunrise of fruits!

ascending

from Michigan lakes

and soil,

pastel and vibrant orange

wet soft firmness,

mellow honey,

gentle watery

weight.

A good spoon

and I scoop

dripping seeds out

of your natural bowl

then slide into the easy

flesh, shining spoon

cradling a moon bite

to my

warm trembling

tongue, momentarily

apprehensive

of flavorless

disappointment.

But you are achingly yes —

cool, tender,

a velvet miracle

of flesh,

light

and water,

part musk, part honey,

a quiet rising,

unearthed, clean

into sky,

morning sun

baptized into my happy,

eager

new-day body.

A poem about something I love, humbly, in the tradition of Pablo Neruda, master of elementary odes.

Photo of cantaloupe shared via Creative Commons by John Bosley.

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Poetry, by Pablo Neruda

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Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) has been one of my top five or so poets for inspiration since I discovered poetry and began writing in college classes in the early 1990s. He had an illustrious career, and is considered by some to be the greatest poet in the Spanish language. He is famous for being a very active Communist politician with a turbulent history in his country, Chile. Near the end of his life he won the Nobel prize for literature, in 1971. (He deserves much more than I am summarizing here, and you can read more at the Poetry Foundation.) I know him best for his odes to ordinary things (which inspired me to write an ode to quinoa here and garlic here) and his sensual love poems. There is a sweet film called "Il Postino" in which an exiled Neruda and his love poems help a humble Postman woo the lovely Beatrice. One of my favorites of his love poems is Body of a Woman.

In the poem I post here, Neruda describes not his love for a woman, but for Poetry, when she arrived. For me it felt just like this when I began that first poetry class, and started to write. The universe opened, and the poet began the first faint line, / faint, without substance, pure / nonsense, / pure wisdom / of someone who knows nothing . . .

Poetry

by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

(translated by Alistair Reid)

La poesía

de Pablo Neruda

Y FUE a esa edad... Llegó la poesía
a buscarme. No sé, no sé de dónde
salió, de invierno o río.
No sé cómo ni cuándo,
no, no eran voces, no eran
palabras, ni silencio,
pero desde una calle me llamaba,
desde las ramas de la noche,
de pronto entre los otros,
entre fuegos violentos
o regresando solo,
allí estaba sin rostro
y me tocaba.

Yo no sabía qué decir, mi boca
no sabía
nombrar,
mis ojos eran ciegos,
y algo golpeaba en mi alma,
fiebre o alas perdidas,
y me fui haciendo solo,
descifrando
aquella quemadura,
y escribí la primera línea vaga,
vaga, sin cuerpo, pura
tontería,
pura sabiduría
del que no sabe nada,
y vi de pronto
el cielo
desgranado
y abierto,
planetas,
plantaciones palpitantes,
la sombra perforada,
acribillada
por flechas, fuego y flores,
la noche arrolladora, el universo.

Y yo, mínimo ser,
ebrio del gran vacío
constelado,
a semejanza, a imagen
del misterio,
me sentí parte pura
del abismo,
rodé con las estrellas,
mi corazón se desató en el viento.

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Neruda was much loved in Peru, and to keep you warm after snuggling with Pablo, I give you Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca singing De Los Amores (About Love); lyrics here, and no, the lyrics were not written by Neruda, but by Javier Lazo (who wrote the music too, I think).

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Ode to Garlic

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Ode to Garlic

In the harbor of autumn
the husbandman
thumbed
gondola-shaped
cloves into the dirt.
They slept
under snow moons.
In spring’s growing sun
they sprouted, and
by July,
he pulled them
from the ground
by their leaf swords
and hung them like
pendulous
bolas
to dry.

Today, he carried
them to me
where I waited
under the maple tree
with empty hands.
Like a midwife,
I cradled them in my arms --
   eggs in a nest,
   clams in a tangle of kelp.

Oh, my children!

I felt the leap
inside, as if I myself
had birthed them
from my own canal.
Being from the center
of me, it was my duty to
rub the dirt
from their faces --
fat and cherubic,
their fragile skin
falling like petals
to the grass,
my papery hands
weaving braids like a crone.

When death comes,
send me down the river
with garlic -- pearls
of life pressed
in the soil of my hands.

~ Ruth M.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

This is my second ode. The first was an Ode to Quinoa, written shortly after Pablo Neruda's birthday July 12, when I was re-inspired by his odes. Here is a nice bio timeline of Neruda's life. I don't know how many odes he wrote, to simple, ordinary things. My favorite at the moment is his Ode to my Socks. I especially like it when you can see his original poem in Spanish next to the English translation, which you can at that link. It adds a deeper awareness of the nuances he intended. Neruda wrote odes to salt, tomatoes, a chestnut on the ground, and many more. I think that reading his, and writing my own, is a perfect way to meditate on the essence of simple, familiar things.

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Ode to Quinoa

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quinoa seeds

If you came from One Stop Poetry for the One Shot Wednesday poem, it's at the end. (Of course you're welcome to read the preamble, I hope you will, since it builds to the ode.) 

I really don't understand how one civilization knows something important for 6,000 years, and I just heard about it a few months ago. Now, if I'm browsing online for recipes (while my beautiful cookbooks lie, unopened in the cupboard), especially healthy ones, it's hard to miss it.

These are quinoa seeds. Quinoa isn't a grain, it's not in the grass family. It's a leafy vegetable, related to spinach, kale and beets, of the Chenopodium species. Quinoa was the second most important food source for the Incans, after the potato, but more important than maize. It's Inca's gold, sacred, the mother grain. They could grow it in the Andes at 13,000 feet (but not maize).

This excellent 1999 article on the history and exciting prospects of quinoa becoming a sustainable major source of food for the world, explains:

By the beginning of this century, quinoa had lost its status as the Mother Grain. Foreign crops, such as barley, had been introduced and surpassed quinoa in importance. Further decline occurred in Peru in the 1940s when the government began to import large amounts of wheat. Between 1941 and 1974, quinoa cultivation plummeted from 111,000 acres to 32,000 acres. Compounded with the growing acculturation of indigenous populations and the stigma of indigenous identification attached to its consumption, quinoa lost its grandeur and became just another subsistence crop for poorer rural families.

Thankfully, with the exploding demand for quinoa from people like me way up here in Michigan, exports from countries like Bolivia are increasing, and quinoa is also being eaten by the masses in the Andes again.

You can see Thomas Jefferson's handsome profile there on the nickel, appropriately resting his head on pillows of quinoa seeds. Among the many geniuses of Thomas Jefferson, one was a passion for experimenting with fruits and vegetables, hundreds of varieties in his 1,000-foot garden at Monticello. He ate mostly vegetables and considered meat a "condiment." (Read here about his favorite vegetables.) I don't know if he knew of, tasted, or experimented with quinoa, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. An interesting bit of history is how Jefferson smuggled rice from Italy in his pockets, risking punishment by death, to develop a new breed mixed with Carolina rice, so that the French would import it, which you can read here.

I visited Monticello at age 13 with my parents and Virginian aunt and uncles;

the top sketch is Jefferson's first of the house he designed;
his inventions, architecture and design sense really captured
my aesthetic imagination. 

 Mulberry Row, Vegetable Garden Terrace, & South Orchard
(Photos borrowed from monticello.org)

I was intimidated by what I didn't know about quinoa, not the least of which was pronouncing it (KEEN-WAH). At last, after my niece potlucked a quinoa dish at the family reunion, we cooked some for a perfect summer Sunday meal. Here is the simplest method for cooking quinoa that I've found. Be sure to rinse it before cooking, although apparently most quinoa at the market now has been rinsed already to remove the bitter outer coating called saponin.

Do you want to know why you might want to eat it? It's delicious - mild and nutty, and the texture is nice, like rice. It's super easy to cook in 15 minutes (don't overcook it). You can even pop it like popcorn apparently. It's high in protein (a half cup serving has 11 grams!) and contains all the amino acids to make it a complete protein to boot. It's gluten-free. It has fighto-chemicals that phyt against cancer and prevent cholestrol from clogging your arteries. It's loaded with potassium, magnesium and manganese. I mean seriously, was this secret buried in stone at Macchu Picchu? Sometimes I really think we "civilized" peoples have unlearned almost every useful bit of wisdom readily available to mankind.

Perfect Summer Sunday Lunch

Black Bean & Tomato Quinoa

Pesto & Crostini

Fried Green Tomatoes

Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa

(we added crushed garlic, cucumbers, chopped spinach,
zucchini, and green peppers to this recipe)

I love the little curlies.

Pesto and Crostini

I use the pesto recipe from The Silver Spoon.

(I do pull The Silver Spoon down off the shelf, often.)

Blend in a food processor:

25 fresh basil leaves

scant 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup pine nuts

1 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

1/3 cup romano cheese, freshly grated

salt

& I add 1-2 cloves crushed garlic

Fried Green Tomatoes

(Don's specialty)

The garlic and basil flavor-bursting pesto

with the milder quinoa and fried green tomatoes

made a nice balancing act.

Accompany with iced tea, lemonade or Pinot Grigio.

Bon appetit!

It was Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's birthday Monday, July 12 (1904, d. September 23, 1973). He was famous for his odes to simple ordinary things, like an artichoke, socks, maize, a lemon. Neruda's sensuality and mindfulness of the universe in every small thing is inimitable, but the inspiration he keeps shining from Chile is a prompt for this Ode to Quinoa anyway. I think quinoa is a good candidate for a Nerudian ode, since it was spurned by Spanish conquistadors as merely food for Indians.

Ode to Quinoa

My fingertips
roll the beads,
miracles of asymmetry,
tiny as toad eyes,
hard as coriander,
the color of my skin.

A bed of it
would be like thick
sand, my knees
and elbows,
hips, my toes
would not be able
to find the bottom.
Happy
airy mattress.

An ocean
or a cup,
softened in a pan,
a spoonful
of autumn sun,
a pillow of
downy earth.
Useless teeth,
a tongue, a mouth,
the wet pads
of my cheeks
massage it into life,
down through the funnel
of my craving,
and into the well
of my stomach’s
open empty hand.


~ Ruth M.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

My ode is part of One Stop Poetry's One Shot Wednesday poetry gathering, where all poets are welcome to share, and readers will find delights. Leslie (Moondustwriter) is this week's host.

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