If enlightenment were a soup,

it would have lentils in it,

lots of lentils and garlic,

slow-cooked with carrots and tomatoes,

with a garnish of fresh parsley.

 

If pumpkin soup with ginger and nutmeg

            were a story,

it would tell a tale of olden times

where people lived amid burnished autumn light,

caught up in bittersweet loves

            and losses,

never fully realizing how quaint and beautiful

were the lives they led.

 

Other things that could be soups

are memory, music, Christmas and twilight.

For nostalgia, onion soup is best,

since root crops remember.

 

Can you see how we slurp up enlightenment in spoons?

Can you taste the story in your soup bowl—

the characters, the landscape, and all that happens?

 

Spoons are shaped to both fit a mouth and carry soup

the way our minds are shaped to anticipate

            and remember.

 

In September, if we all put up a few quarts

            of potato-leek,

it may carry us through till spring.

 

 

© by Timothy Walsh..

Used with the author’s permission.