Noodling

It’s been quite the week. And I might have taken the Wolf Moon eclipse as my Sunday Weekly poem’s subject matter. But then we had an eclipse at Wolf Moon 2019 and I wrote one then. And I did write a draft of 2020 version, but I figured we might need to mix things up a bit this week.

Or nature might have been my muse. We have had some spectacular skies here this week as a parenthesis to the full moon’s eclipse.

But nah! When you have houseguests you tend to think a lot about menus. So food has been my muse. Also, there is a lot of music being played in the house.

 Noodle
  
 I want to stretch that infinite string
 of dried dough that has become 
 an elastic grace note pulled
  
 from the magic pot of water 
 at a rolling boil that’s be-bop
 and it soars round in its steam
  
 and you can keep it plain or do it
 fried, or meaty, or saucy or so
 spicy it feels kind of naughty,
  
 its cayenne kick that turns 
 to a croon till that bit of old dough
 is swooning onto your plate and it all
  
 started with a migrate out of the east
 on a camel’s back west, travelling
 the old Silk Road route and all along
  
 the people named it their way –
 gnudel or nouille or the even faster
 pasta.  Noodles are the original jazz.
  
 Each place would sing its song
 on a plate no matter what its name,
 served up the sauce wherever it came.
  
 We kind of like this noodling
 with flour, water and the odd spare egg.
 It’s poor people’s princely fare
  
 that can sing a mean hymn of praise
 and swoop into some melancholy longing
 for your baby who just stayed
  
 and never followed your string, 
 just sucked it all up with your silky voice.
 It’s all jazz and the world is just
  
 a pea served with your noodles.
 And all of us are just following
 that elastic note on its last string.
  
 Copyright © Bee Smith 2020. All rights reserved. 

Featured image Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash