Mark J. Mitchell

You build the soup slowly. She’s gone away
for mercy. She’s coming home tomorrow
and soup’s better that next day. The onions
want to soften, grow gold. You’ve just begun.
Let them melt into broth and get to know
each herb, meet the barley. A second day
will do it. They’ll grow close as her plane flies
into home airspace. Let your hands defy
time and fire, while she gets tender work done
in a middle time zone. You slice onions
miss her mouth, even after fifty years,
but keep working on her welcome meal. Tears—
that’s the small price you pay for all she’s become
and made you. You’re not crying. It’s onions.

Mark J. Mitchell  has been a working poet for 50 years. His latest collection is Something To Be. A novel, A Book of Lost Songs, is due in Spring. He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster. He lives in San Francisco.