A Blessing
After Li-Young Lee
Twice a year Apa cooked his “monk’s half-moon” dish: pumpkin blossom
lamb curry—first crackle the fenugreek seeds in ghee, stir the thinly sliced
baby pumpkins translucent, add a concocted paste of wild herbs
soaked in buttermilk overnight, drop the smoked fatted lamb pieces,
pour bone stock, let the fat begin to melt, then spread the flowers whole
on top until they’re dreaming—but before offering it to us over steamed rice,
even before his gods, he’d serve those who were not home, place the filled
clay bowls on the edge of the smoldering hearth in a half-ring,
always bigger portions than for those politely waiting around him
with clean wet hands, which made me wish I were not there
but forgot all about it as bite after bite dissolved in my mouth,
each mouthful lusher than the last, more ravenous for the next:
salt, cliff-forged flesh, aged smoke, foraged fragrance, rain-honeyed dark,
earthed moonmilk, petrichor pistils, butter gossip of the butterflies, fire
of the fireflies, summer, sweet summer, sweet impossible summer—
