This is the kitchen
where Aunt Della gave me dreams
and placed a yellow baby chick in my hands
while it rained hard outside and we always caught
the sky’s water in the old rain barrel with
a tiny black kitten stranded below its staves.
This is the kitchen
where we gathered around the thrashing table
for Christmas meals, desserts and fireplace stories
from wrinkled lips that held wooden pipes tightly packed
with black Kentucky tobacco that fed our family
and started wars while it filled the elders’ lungs.
This is the kitchen
where we smelled yeast bread baking
that warmed our growing child hearts and grateful spirits
with spiced jam cakes and ingredients from the land,
black walnuts, wheat flour, molasses, butter from the cow,
the taste fresh with sugary caramel icing.
This is the kitchen
where high back chairs were caned and woven
into the texture of our always connected and winding lives
and where even on holidays sweet Uncle Bob never spoke a word
because the sounds of the great war followed him home
so we sat below him on the floor quietly listening to his hurt.
2024 Winning Submission for Penned: Poetry