Coming home from playing in the snow,
handmade mittens soggy, smelling
like sheep, toes frozen from snow
that slipped inside too loose boots,
steamed up windows signaled serious
cooking afoot. And the aroma, vegetal
yet grounded in earthy beefiness,
my Grandma’s goulash, quite the dish.
Onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes
and braised stew meat, a cheap
cut that softened, melted with heat
and time. Top notes of garlic and yes,
paprika, the real deal from one of
the European stores in the old town
where once my grandparents lived.
I’d shop with Grandma for bryndza there,
that salty cheese to top halusky.
It too smelled like sheep, made of their
milk, and eversotasty on noodles drenched
in melted butter. We’d buy poppy seeds to
soak in honey for holiday bobalki and cakes.
She rolled the dough for pastries or pierogi
with strong strokes, just as she kneaded
and punched the bread dough we’d put to rise
beneath a featherbed to keep it warm.
I’d nap there too, in yeasty peace.
I’d dream that I was her, asleep in the hay
of her grandfather’s barn, waking to cousins
at play, sure of their place under the sun,
the wide Carpathian Mountains, their home.
When I awoke, it was time to bake or cook
or savor the flavors she taught me to favor,
the heat, the salt, the buttery and sweet.
Now, in my kitchen she is near, her clear blue
eyes, white hair. Her name is Anna. She knew
that food and home and love are all the same.
Marianne Taylor is a bookseller at Powell’s on Burnside where she manages the sales floor in the Blue, Gold, and Green rooms. In a previous life she taught literature and creative writing at a Midwestern college, and her poetry has been published widely in national journals and anthologies. She once served as Poet Laureate of her former small town, but for the past three years she’s been trying to find her way around Portland.