Heart of Things (WC)

(Wendy Cabell, published in Come to the Table: Recipes for Loving and Serving, edited by Ched Johnson and Nancy Collins-Warner, Monastery of Saint Gertrude, 2021. From October 31, 2020, All Hallow's Eve (eve of All Saints' Day), and feast day of Saint Erth of Cornwall (brother of Saint Ia). prompted by the Abbey of the Arts retreat Listening at the Threshhold: Voices of Saints and Ancestors. Image from here.)

Heart of  Things

(after Kim Moore)

  It's the heartbeat, 

  pulsed DNA, that

knows its roots. How

I come from Rosaries 

 in pockets of aprons,

passed on from mother 

        to daughter.

From aprons in kitchens

made warm by flame

and good ol' potatoe soup.

From soup on tables

where rash words stole                

Grace that could 

have been. 

                                                                                                                         

 I come from voices                            

held now as treasure,

         even so.

*From prompt, craft a poem after Kim Moore’s My People; from Christine Valtners Paintner’s Listening At the Threshold: Voices of Saints and Ancestors (Abbey of the Arts, Galway), October 31, 2020.