Thursday, June 25, 2015

of chicken salad, angel biscuits, and applesauce



cooking for the company

just before the Solstice, we head up to the Smokies,
where the rosebay rhododendron carelessly 
create splendor along the creek.
the bee balm luxuriantly red 
where a chance opened for it,

we luck out at Carver’s Orchard
for the first summer transparency apples are “in,”
then in our car, then washed and quartered, 
stem ends removed, slowly boiled down,
Foley food mill pressed into sauce,
and sugar added with exuberance
to match and set up the unparalleled 
tartness and flavor of this queen of apples,

six weeks from now our big coalescence
for the overnight on Mt. LeConte happens,
so it’s time to make applesauce, 
boil chickens for salad,
make angel biscuits--all for the freezer,
and then for our company for the mountain,

a lone rhododendron blossom floats down the slow creek,
soft thunder hints that the oppressive humidity
might find its way to rain,

time to go check on the cooking. . .

by Henry H. Walker
June 19, ’15

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