She Buys Cookbooks
A Poem
It is a beautiful kitchen
Arched steel and glass
Polished blues and creams
Bright with morning light
And caught country fresh
In the picture window:
The green of the garden.
At the front of the house
Four lanes of traffic
Blur by in hissing fumes:
But in the kitchen she stands
All still, looking out
Into the shadowy quiet.
She buys cookbooks:
Beautiful glossy cookbooks
With smooth wide pages
And brightly-coloured food;
They sit perfectly
In the pale blue kitchen.
She sits at the breakfast bar,
On her steel and cream stool,
And flips through the glossy pages,
Reading recipe after recipe,
While outside a pair of mating foxes sleep.
She goes to the supermarket
And breathes in the fluorescent lights
And the gleaming aisles, the familiar rows
Of clean-cut products and comforting brands
And buys vegetables she’s never heard of.
She begins with sauces: a basic roux,
Cheese, tomato, bolognaise;
She makes pasta bakes and potato bakes;
She chops vegetables and launches them into pans;
She makes pastry, sweet and savoury, short crust and puff;
And pies and pies and more pies: cherry pie, apple pie,
Pumpkin pie, chocolate cheese-berry pie.
The garden darkens as she measures and chops,
Kneads and rolls, the bright lights of the kitchen
Spilling outwards, its pale glory creeping onto the green
In all its shining civilised glory
And the foxes stretch and slink away;
As the radio blares and she forgets
The taste of mould on her tongue
Amidst aubergines and avocadoes and courgettes.
