November 30, 2010

seed by seed

I am making soup. The squash is hard-skinned, requiring
the sharp blade of a peeler and a strong and steady hand.
Soon, though, it is bare as a baby, and the knife’s firing
through no problem, and the pot is ready to receive. But then I land
on a skein of seeds, their pods webbed to flesh, and everything slips.
I have to stop cutting. I have to take a spoon and gentle them out,
use fingers to slide them out. What I want to say is how something keeps
reminding me to slow down, get eye-level with the mess, look doubt
square in the face, and start digging seed by seed. It is this slow,
sometimes, how the clearing begins, the starting over, the letting go.