Eat This City

by Thunderbirds are Now!

Soup And Bread

I'm plucking awful guitar chords,
misshapen and haphazard
in the basement of my house distant
from anything melodic or musical,
far removed from sheet music
or my mother's ears.
She used to listen while I practiced
the saxophone in my upstairs bedroom
while I still lived there with my parents
when I was in the seventh grade.
She would walk into my room ushering in
a smell of organic whole grain bread and home
made soup still simmering with lentils,
kidney and garbanzo beans, and wild rice.
My mother used to tell me that
dinner was ready and good and
I would put down my Alto and remove
the wet reed and follow her downstairs
to the kitchen boiling over
with her cooked scents,
the culinary smells that followed
her and once, even stopped my melody
around supper time.