October 25, 2016

devouring the stew

At dinner, my stepsons say things I don't understand, their language culled
from the antics of rising YouTube stars. They show me the clips but even then,
the narrative is lost on me, distant as Pluto. And it does feel sometimes like we're orbiting
disparate solar systems, our paths crossing in random galactic events no astronomer
could ever predict. Last night, a meeting kept us from an intersection at the table.
I'd made beef stew in a cast-iron pot. The carrots had been sliced with certain
tenderness, the potatoes scrubbed clean, bay leaves gentled in.
When we came home, the boys had settled in their rooms; their bowls lay emptied in the sink.
On the stove, the outline of a ladle, pale remnant of the meal they'd plowed through.
The universe keeps expanding, I've heard. But maybe the opposite is also true.