Ode to our Cast Iron Frying Pan

 

Your tempered contours fire forged

Your fecund plain a dance floor 

Finger filtered goodies dishevel 

Shiver goofy in the moment’s heat

Scents vapours mingle merge

Forget the rip from the cling of milky earth

The cold rebirth in the vegetable drawer.

You crucible, you purveyor of nourishment 

Reconciler of flavours, maestro of symphonic sizzle:

Even after closing time, your breast littered, encrusted

Defiled with the unworthy post dance debauched

Can be a vehicle for insight, and for love,

For it is I that must tend to you

After you have yielded sumptuous morsels and

The food goddess has mercilessly cast you aside.

 

Ablution is first, prolonged phosphate free ablution

Your parched vulnerable skin will brook no soap

Lest future meals be tainted; a clear-watered soak

Elbow greased scrape, zesty jet scour, and you are

Clean but dull, spent, scourged by flavour’s ravages.

Now is the ointment moment, the reflective puddle poured

Sunflower oil sloshed into grateful pores

Your hard skin glistening black and newly risen;

Your heft in my hand as warm and real

As the meal disseminating light into the blood’s belly

Grows gratitude in my heart mind  for the feed

And more so for the opportunity to tend your needs

To salve you from the rust that never sleeps

To love even the patches of drudgery scaled

As we clamber towards the abyss.

 

JR MacLean

October 2021