To The Waterfall

I've met few people who've vacationed to Mammoth Cave in March. Most Midwesterners head to Florida or the Texas shore for spring break, but one year our family headed to the hills, the Kentucky hills with a stop off at the state's National Park. I might have been seven or eight, I don't remember, but what I do recall was being hesitant of the smell of wet earth and the quiet of all that darkness so far below the ground. Sure, I recall the folklore and some stories of the caves discoveries, but mostly I remember a hike we took to a waterfall outside of the park.

It was gray and slightly raining. We cloaked ourselves in parkas and started heading towards the trail map. I was fumbling with my jacket and fell behind, I recall passing another family debating to hike or not. Their voices were calm, but concerned and the debate was about their young daughter and if she could handle walking over all the wet rock and slippery earth. She looked my age, my height and she too had heavy glasses. I recall listening and wanting to interrupt and tell them that they could come with us, but I didn't. I just stared. The little girl stood between her parents saying nothing. The parents decided against the hike. The girl didn't argue, she followed suit and watched as her mother helped her take her jacket off and climb back into the car.

I caught up with my family and really, I cannot tell you more details of the waterfall other than the cold wet rock layered in moss was dotted with spring flowers. While I stood with wet tennis shoes and damp socks all I thought about was that little girl, somewhere in her warm car looking out the window. I thought that if I knew her, I would send her a picture, a letter or some detail about the waterfall. I didn't want her to feel like she was missing out.

This past week, my book was rejected yet again and this time I was given comments in regards to my poems. I am beginning to think I would rather have a sterile letter simply stating the rejection in polite business English. No, not this letter for this editor found it an opportunity to be more personal and to tell me that my poetry is arbitrary. I responded in polite business English myself, but found her word choice a bit harsh.

And what does this story of the girl at the waterfall parking lot and being rejected have in common? Frankly, I write poems for that girl. I think and hope I will always write poems for her. In my mind, she's my audience or the person who maybe didn't go along with me and I want to do my best to show, explain, share and hopefully give her an opportunity to experience too.

I'd like to think that this desire doesn't come from my ego as much as it is from a belief that if you want to write than you need to have a story worth sharing, a poem with a point. Something to give to this world as an offering and not as some absolute. So here it goes, a new poem for a new year. Enjoy.

Sirens at 31o

Clara hangs blank CD’s from cherry trees,

to blind hawking magpies, while her daughters

wait for wind to turn the silver in sun

to catch seconds of rainbows without rain.

The three trees weight heavy in late summer

like Clara’s girls grown, still living under her

eye and locked screened door. A window opens

at dusk lifting hints of radio to fill the orchard

with pitched notes in the off key of dance halls,

tight jeans and slow smiles from boys under hats.

The girls sing louder than a meadow starred

with flowers. Louder than drown out owls.

As if their song were a car filled with gas

each chord a knitted feather to lift the past.

The Warm Room

Until not so recently, I spent a lot of time around the holiday season waiting in train stations, bus stations and I even camped out for four days, (yes, four days ) in an airport terminal waiting for a storm to pass. Luckily, the four day hiatus was post-Christmas and it did not look like this train station. Most people I know find waiting in random locations tiresome and annoying. Franky, I miss it terribly. Yes, I miss even places like this train station in Poland where the task of traveling sometimes felt more like an act of faith than an activity. Traveling in Poland was more of a crap shot as to where you might really end up, but even more improbable to predict was the duration of time it would take to go anywhere. Thankfully, a lot of places I ended up looked like this.
This is the place I wish all trains would end up. Maybe they do. Maybe in the locomotives of our minds we each have some preordained destination where one day at random like the Polish train system we will crank open the doors and find a spring field and one bold poppy, waiting. Just like us. Just like us.

And this is why I like waiting at stations, somehow it's like a democratic purgatory of sorts where everyone is alike, everyone waits just like everyone else. No one can out wait another or one up someone's ability to wait. Although I recall watching a group of Serbian men one New Year's try to out wait the world by singing the longest song that latest seven days. They seem to have been seated in a warm room of an Austrian train station for a entire week or seven bottles of vodka which ever came first, just waiting. Perhaps they were waiting for a train that would take them to some other time and not just some distant town.

I've also witnessed people who think they can out wit waiting. A cellphone in hand and one in a protected pocket and laptop in tow, shouting into one of their cellphones to some poor customer service person at an airline company. I've heard sentences shouted, such as, "Do you have any idea who I am," while not so secretly purchasing a ticket on sidestep.com. These people are amazing to watch and I cannot believe their hasn't been a coffee table book of photos taken at airports, to show the agony of defeat or the triumph of home comings. I guess there are just some moments of vulnerability that are just too much to see.

And odd as it might sound, maybe it is just the vulnerability of waiting that I like, the fact that people will strike up conversations with you and openly discuss their views of politics or hope to exchange personal philosophies and all with or without knowing each others first names. My fondest of conversations happen when both parties were speaking different languages and somehow, something got communicated. I recall getting relationship advice once by a man who only spoke Hungarian, I don't speak Hungarian. But somehow, we managed to find ways to learn about each other. It's amazing what you can only learn from hand gestures. I'm sure if any of you who are reading this are mimes then you can really back me up here. I quietly applaud you.

But sometimes, all it has to be is a phrase, a simple gesture that you hold on to. So I send this poem to you as a reminder. If you get stuck somewhere this holiday season, look around, take off your i-pod and maybe you'll have your own moment in limbo that feels surreal and thankfully a gift from the warm waiting room. Happy Holidays. I hope all of your travels end up in a field or as least may it feel like it. Enjoy.

Stop Request

You wouldn’t mistake your mother

for a woman who walks through glass

and sits beside your book.

So you pass the time and frame

the woman’s face, the one who

isn’t your mother. She’s like a Budapest tram

ticket you carry in your wallet

next to the taste of oranges

shared with a boy whose name

you don’t remember. You watch her hands brush

a bit of hair away from her brow while she opens

a can of beer. Not cheap beer either

and rinses her teeth. The warm yeast fills

the room like the smell of sex on cotton. She spits

on the floor. In that moment you love her

more than your mother, who would never spit.

When you leave the room, she shouts

Happy New Year in German. And you believe her.

SkiJøring for Sissies

I've never felt bad about using the word sissy. Sure, I've been known to enforce word restrictions in class, but sissy has never been one of them. Perhaps it says more about me and my desire to be willing to jump into any physical test or at least try--even if it is badminton. I cannot say I was born an athlete, nor would I say I was born a poet, but it's surprising how little talent you need to actually feel good about just giving something a try--be it writing or flailing your body. Even if it is as odd as being pulled by a small dog in arctic temperatures around a snow-filled golf course, attempting a sport directly translated from Norwegian to mean "ski driving," Skijøring, I must admit, is very inspiring. Plus, you get to use such strange letters as the sliced o to make you feel better about your linguistic skills if you aren't that sporty.

And in the history of poetry, you rarely hear about sporty poets climbing mountains or circumnavigating anything but their own brains in search of themselves. The Hemingways of this world seem suited to fiction, riding out their days in Western backdrops along the backs of horses or venturing off for years on end whale hunting, sailing, pirating with nothing but bags of wind and the hope to return to stable shores and typewriters. Their romance with taming nature resembles the task of trying to tell a good story--a long affair of battling odds and time. Included above is my own (failed) attempt to look like I know what I am doing with a gun. I know, I will stick to a pencil.

But poets? We are an odd bunch. We usually work erratically spending long hours of the day or night alone, then sleep it off and go to our jobs that might not resemble anything poetic in hopes that we'll feel like writing again. If we were to be put in some sort of police line-up, a poet might be hard to identify. Minus the tendency towards tweed, poets are really hard to sum up physically. It's not like some genetic disposition like basketball or swimming where the body might guide the path. No, poetry doesn't work like that. I cannot recall hearing someone examine a baby's hands or feet and claiming their destiny, "My that furrowed brow will make him a fine thinker, maybe he'll be a writer?"

Nor is it as mysterious or mythical as some might try to persuade. Actually, if anything being a poet is like being a farmer. Seriously. There needs to be a whole lot of faith in something as temperamental as the weather and a stubborn and sometimes overly prideful belief in your efforts amounting into something, if anything at all. Yet in the case of poets, not farmers, the faith lies in something even more elusive than rain, ( I shyly pause before saying this to not sound too trite), you have to have faith in inspiration and your own capabilities to find it--even in the dark. I like when asked if Faulkner wrote everyday he said, "I only write when I'm inspired, and frankly, I get inspired everyday." Sure, he wrote fiction, but some of the most poetic fiction, so I think it works.

But what works the most for inspiration, isn't waiting for it to come or chasing it across lands and sea, I like to use the analogy of skijoring. Skijoring is a sport based upon a simple principle. You have a harness, the dog has a harness and both of your harnesses are connected and if you move fast enough on your skis and the dog moves fast enough pulling you, you'll find an odd rhythm. Sure, you have sort of forced this rhythm, but it feels somewhat liberating and endless all at the same time.

Now, unlike my husband who holds a world cup in Skijoring, I recently tried it for the first time. I must admit I was oddly displacing my memory of learning to water ski with the idea of skate skiing behind a dog that resembles the size and appearance of a juvenile seal. I had these visions of being pulled into snow banks and being drowned in cold temperatures and arctic winds. Thankfully, I was wrong. I was gracefully given a small female dog, named Mabel, and we were harnessed up and after thorough instruction such as, "Just keep skating. If you fall, the dog will stop." I shyly called, "okay Mabel, lets....um..go?" And that's all it took. Suddenly, this seal leaped and we took off with a short tug and oddly enough some sort of rhythm began.

As I've stated previously, I really cannot claim any physical talent in sports, but I can occasionally keep rhythm and in the bitter cold and still skies of Fairbanks, Alaska little Mabel and myself started moving, together. Yes, I did fall. And yes, Mabel did stop. But we got up and kept going, kept trying to tap into that feeling of some closeness to breath, beat and bray of our hearts pounding under all those layers, skating away from all that disbelief. I wanted to keep doing laps around that golf course or really I felt inspired despite all the doubt and darkness.

And that's what poetry does or tries to do at its best. It can take the simplest of situations and turn them into moments you keep as coveted memories, to tap into, to get close enough to feeling your heart and head aren't at odds, but simply a harness connecting them, moving together in hopes your efforts might just move or inspire. But the real task? It isn't just feeling this, it's trying to put this rhythm into words in the hope you can do it well enough to also inspire someone else. I hope I am not too much of a sissy to keep trying myself.

The Souffle in Each of Us

It has been far too long. Far too long since I've written and I bet far too long since you've made a souffle. Now I am sure you can come up with a variety of reasons why you haven't made a souffle in awhile or if ever just as I have a variety of reasons why I haven't written. It doesn't matter. Now, you are here and I am here and so, let's be thankful for being present. But really, let's really be grateful for butter and eggs. Regardless of what you find to bind these two sentient creatures, such as chocolate or cheese, butter and eggs do their modest magic to create the true showmanship of any souffle.

Let's get it straight. Souffles are rather existential creatures. Seriously, they demand a lot of attention to make and they aren't intended as a dish to sit alone in the fridge as leftovers. You make souffles to be eaten right away. Despite their French origin, I tend to think of souffles as being more Italian in personality especially in their completion as if they come out of the oven all puffed up and wanting to grab the recognition of everyone in the room. Saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me. Tell me how wonderful I already know I am." But let us not forget their humble beginnings, especially this souffle that I send to you. It is far more pilgrim than pomp.

This souffle hails from perhaps the most solemn and least showcased vegetable, the carrot. Please don't expect this souffle to puff itself like Napoleon on a white horse nor will this be a dish that you might want to make for some hot date. This is Middlewest where we honor the quiet and stable creatures of this world. Here in Middlewest, the carrot is king. Yup, this carrot souffle comes off as not even the supporting side dish on Thanksgiving, more like the gaffer, the electronics guy who makes all the others shine, letting even the one hit wonder brussel sprout roasted in balsamic accompanied with dried cherries take a moment to be the Turkey's coveted sidekick. This carrot souffle is more of a mediation than a simple side. It's more of a dish to make while you are married than dating.

But for me, this carrot souffle symbolizes Thanksgiving in tastes and cultural texture (if that could be a term) For now, just roll with it. Thanksgiving is a time to be gracious, slow and mindful. To feel comforted in all that you presently have and have achieved. For years, my father would place five kernels of corn on each of our bare plates as a reminder that actually after the first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a period of great hardship and starvation. The five kernels symbolize how for days some Pilgrims were rationed just five kernels of corn, like some poorly dealt hand of even worse luck, to survive a whole days work of toiling on frozen soil and cold pews to pray. Don't get me wrong, my dad wasn't trying to make the day a real downer as much as a time to remember how little you can live on and still be grateful.

Thanksgiving is a such a modest holiday, a time to just eat and perhaps nap and read a book and slowly let the warmth of the room allow you to slip into memory or mediation. Perhaps one of my favorite Thanksgivings took place in a kitchen the size of a shoe box, seriously, I am sure most of you have larger closets than this kitchen. I was teaching in Poland, living with a British vegetarian and for some odd reason I wanted to bake a Thanksgiving meal in my Russian oven that sometimes worked.

What did work that year was the carrot souffle filling our apartment with the foreign smell of America, a whiff of what I wanted to try to show my roommate, that America had a quiet side, a humble beginning of sorts and that once a year our culture actually remembered and rejoiced. As if our own pomp could be dulled at least for one day in honor of the tastes of rosemary, turkey, cranberries, cinnamon, onions and juniper berries. Somehow these smells communicated more than my stories or family photos of what I wanted to try and share or show about being American.

I recall my roommate, Anna, walking into the kitchen confused yet drawn by the smells I had somehow managed to conjure up from bartering at markets. That night despite the fact that Anna hadn't eaten meat in over three years she ate her entire plate clean. I had a few Poles over and listened to music on our cassette player and tried to explain national holidays to each other, but mostly we talked about food.

How Anna would only needed to smell the faintest hint of an orange to be in her nona's (who lived outside of Rome) garden, Tomek said if he smelled warm strawberries in butter, he knew his mother was filled with spring and happiness, while she made berry pierogies. Each of us had some flavor that wasn't just a national dish or icon rather some memory of humility and grace. And food is like that, a little bit of attention and care and you can recreate something to fill a distant room far from your home, your family, your culture to share something as simple as carrots. Without translation.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

Carrot Souffle

2 cups carrots, peeled & diced
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup sugar ( I don't add sugar b/c the carrots are sweet enough)
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook carrots in boiling water. Drain carrots and let cool for about five minutes.
3. Place carrots in blender and add butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt and eggs.

4. Add flour, baking powder and milk. Blend again.

5. Bake for 45 minutes or until fork ready, like a cake. Remember this won't puff.

6. Share and enjoy.

A Jar of Garlic

This coming week marks a two year anniversary with moving to Missoula. The story of how and even why I moved here is either too long or too simple to tell. Frankly, I can sum it up in just one word: hope. But I must clarify. I cannot say I moved West with the idealized hope of finding gold, wealth or even the antiquated idea of homesteading. Nor did I have the kind of simple hope in greeting cards such as, "Hope you are feeling better" with a picture of a fluffy cat wearing a beret. I would like to think I didn't move with a suitcase full of naive intent thinking life is always better somewhere else. Nor would I say I was searching for a different version of hope that was once lodged in a jar, Pandora's Jar, and circled out along with the other abstracts such as destruction and grief. The darker side of hope was surely not my intention either. The hope that I was chasing was simple, a hope to start again in my mid-thirties in a town I liked the sound of. Simply, Missoula has a high concentration of both writers and mountains and all I wanted to do or hoped to do was write a lot and ski a lot.

For most people, hope seems to fall to the positive side if life, offering one last chance in a mired of desperate feelings or a state of chancelessness. It can be that undeniable glimpse or fraction of light that can surprise even the darkest of hours--when even stars betray you and seem like just some other light for someone else to wish on. Yet hope strikes us when we least expect it and when we fundamentally need it the most. Now, I am not going to take this into a metaphysical realm, not completely, nor will I start bringing in religion either, but the complexity of hope fascinates me.

Perhaps my first sense of the difficulty with hope came from one of my ninth grade students, Maggie MacAlpine. Maggie spoke with a slight lisp and carried herself with an awkward stance of confidence. She always caught every error I made on any of her Greek Mythology quizzes and had the maturity of a thirty year old trapped in a young and awkward preteen body. During one of our readings of Epimetheus, the one who ignored the warnings not to take any gifts from Zeus, blindly took the gift of a woman who also came with a rather questionable jar. Now, I have to pause here to say how difficult it is to really teach Greek Mythology to ninth graders without having to go into polygamy, sodomy, rape or try to explain wife swapping? Basically with Greek Mythology you are teaching unedited sex education. Seriously, try to teach anything about Zeus PG-13.

Luckily I was teaching in Rome where billboards are unrated and mythology still makes sense in understanding Italian laws of attraction. There might not be a Zeus, but there are labels like Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Gabbana or controlling Italian nonas and mamas that wield some power over the city's men. So mythology was more like teaching sociology and Maggie MacAlpine was a quick study. After we had read how Epimetheus blindly doted over his mail ordered bride (via Zeus the all knowing post master), Epimetheus was more than smitten and basically let Pandora do anything, such as release all the evils of the world from her jar. So watching the new world that he and his brother, Prometheus, had so carefully made fall apart with the simple opening of a jar, Epimetheus finally realized the meaning of his name, "after thought." Concluding the fact that he was an idiot.

It was tempting at times to say, "okay kids, so what did we really learn from this myth?" Hoping to hear something along the lines of "Well, Ms. Walter, this myth clearly shows the problem with power dynamics between men and women and how you want to be sure not to be controlled by another person's motives especially if you are persuaded by superficial aspects like beauty and charm." This was a challenge. They were fourteen. They didn't even really like the opposite sex yet. Luckily though, I was in Italy and these were budding clones of fashion and sexual impression. I'd glance in the teacher's edition for the "right" answer and find something like, "Epi means after and this story clearly illustrates the power of afterthought or hindsight." What? This is so dumb, these kids read 10 pages for this answer, I thought to myself. What good would this answer really do for these kids in life? Do I tell something like, "Basically kids, you can tell yourself that your heart was broken and that you were mislead by this person whom you trusted for basically, linguistic reasons. Be sure to know the Greek root of your name and remember kids, It's called hindsight." Or maybe I could say, "Basically kids, never trust people with jars." No, they needed something more and Maggie MacAlpine was going to help us.

Maggie raised her hand and said, "Mthss Walther, thes is odd. If Pandthora released all the evilths in the world, then why was hope in there? I thought hopthe was good?" I paused. Looked out the window and smiled. I didn't want to interject or release my own dark side for these desk-seated, freshly-washed pink cheeked fourteen year olds. So I asked, "What do you think of Maggie's question, is hope a positive or negative feeling?" Looking around at blank and nervous faces, I said, "Or is it both?" "Have you ever felt "tricked" by hope?"

And I must say, what followed will go down in my mental history as some of the most fascinating discussions of metaphysical dilemmas posed. Yes by 14 year olds. Seriously these kids understood dilemmas and the temptation of hope that can blind them. Sure, they referenced buying video games they thought were going to be cool and ended up being lame, but at least they started to understand the importance of cause and effect of their actions brought on by the slippery duality and temptation of hope. No, I wasn't trying to form small jaded skeptics in my classroom. Rather, I wanted them to think through the repercussions of their actions especially if they were using naive or shallow reasonings. What were the results they were creating by their actions? Basically, I wanted them to learn accountability. I wanted them to think through what they were being tempted by and if they were willing to accept the possible results. Or so I hoped.

And so, even out of the classroom, hope finds me yet again today in this place that I feel grateful to not have been lead by shallow or simple reasons. This place is Missoula, but more importantly or metaphysically speaking this place is my heart for while I was driving into the darkness over mountain passes and along rivers lit by moon and October stars, I found myself falling into a city where I would also fall in love. Luckily, I wasn't led by own blindness brought on by superficial reasonings nor by shallow intentions. Not this time. Happily, I can say in these two years of living here, I've had to deal with both the darker and lighter side of hope and thankfully I've had to learn and keep learning my own answer I finely gave to my class in regards to Pandora's box: Each of us posses the power to choose how we want our gifts to be used, for positive and creative means or for negative and destructive results. We might not choose correctly all the time, but remember we aren't the gods and that makes us lucky: We get to choose which hope we want to live.

Cold Storage

Most days are either beef or wildflowers,

brief moments of sustenance or sun

filling the gardens of my mind with nothing

but garlic, whole heads posing

as papery fists that never bloom or hit

the surface without the hint taste

of swollen rain and tart onions. Even

when neglected, my heart, the bulb

of my body never rots, no matter

how hard I try. Forget about farmers'

almanacs, French techniques or thinking

the sky of soil pearls just you a private moon.

Your heart, bitter onion of your being, roots

in the basement of your neglect. Your savored weed.

The Loyalty of Recipes

So you're at a pot luck and you notice the chard and kale torte you bring seems to be one of those dishes that could so easily arrive and act happy as just the supporting side dish, passively sitting by the louder Mexican or Italian dishes. But it's not. People find themselves coming back and less publicly polite with their second time around portions. You notice the first timers took gracious sizes perhaps apprehensive of limp greens blanketed in goat cheese. The second and some third timers cannot help themselves, both in the amount and in their compliments. Someone finally turns to ask you, "Did you make this?"

This brings up one of my favorite moments in cooking, no, not the ego in saying, "why yes, I did actually make that fontina and goat cheese torte you seem to be stuffing in your face," feeling as if you won some ribbon for best hot dish. No, I am not that Midwestern, but hopefully Midwesternly modest. Rather, I enjoy continuing the statement with, "It's my mother's recipe, do you want it, I'd be happy to e-mail it to you." And so the physics of loyalty in cooking lives on. The sharing of recipes that were once written out on small note cards with stenciled wagon wheels or creeping lilies of the valley as a header and most likely written in an archaic and illegible handwriting that included the line: Recipe from: Ester or Judy.

The other favorite part of this interaction is how giving credit to someone else who most likely lives far away offers some validation or even a whiff of lineage and secrecy to the most basic chocolate chip cookie. But really the question is, how long must you claim your prized peanut brittle as laying honors to someone else? Until just when does it become yours? When do you have to stop claiming a dish as being inherited by your aunt in Houston, your mother in Michigan or your grandma, who bless her soul has passed on long before you wield her sweet Christmas buns each December. When are they really your sweet buns? When does the loyalty of invention seem to rest on your laurals?

This question of loyalty recently came to head when I was given what seemed at first as a just a bag of home made caramel corn. I must admit I do not have a compulsive sweet tooth that I need to keep in check, but what I was most taken by with this bag of salty sweet was how perfectly each kernel was coated. I examined the bag, put it up into the light and gently turned each piece to see any variation or trace of some blemished or burnt marks. But none were found. These observations occurred all before I had even opened the bag. And when I did, seriously, this could be claimed as Pandora's treat. I gently untied the ribbon and to find at first just a faint hint of sugar, enough as if to say, "just eat one, a sample per say." I ate one. And another. And as if I had been possessed but some sugar sultan, I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing. I was at work. And I was stuffing my face and probably making a lot of noise in the process. Soon I was not looking at each kernel as much as how much I could try to hold in my palm and stuff in my face without looking like I was a refugee displaced at a boulangerie.

As I noticed half of the bag was emptied in less than ten minutes, I turned to see if some whiff of cold air had come into the room and if I was going to be visited by something or someone who would demand I make some sort of life decision like keep eating the caramel corn or give up my first imaginary born child. It was at this point, I knew I had to do two things. One, share the rest of the "treat" with someone else and two, find out how to make it. Obviously, the first task was easy to do, but finding out the recipe was a bit more a challenge. The caramel corn was made by my boss, Cheryl. Now, I work at a non-profit natural health food store and frankly my boss is so modest that I am not sure she would even like to be called "my boss." She was once claimed (jokingly of course) as being "the ceasar of the grocery store", but that seems a bit totalitarian. I like to think of where I work as being a mini Sweden. Here, in our Sweden people are treated equally and fairly, most of the higher positions are run by women and even the furniture in the deli is a higher quality but similar Ikea design. My boss is a tall and willowed blond, who is fair and humane, so she's more like a prime minister if Sweden or The Good Food store were to have one.

I peered in Cheryl's office to see if she was busy and if I could get her recipe. Little did I know, that this caramel corn was usually made for the holidays and no, there was no amount of begging or flattering that was going to give me the recipe. Now you need to understand that I didn't leave the room and go back to scheduling cooking classes and hope whom I had shared the caramel corn with had more restraint than myself and might have left a few kernels. I stayed in Cheryl's office because I was incredibly curious about this recipe's history and more importantly, Cheryl's loyalty and her calm refusal to give me or anyone for that matter the recipe. Ever.

Cheryl told me her sister, Marsha, brought this recipe to her house one Christmas to make together as a sisterly gesture. For years after, Cheryl continued to make the caramel corn and claimed the fame and fabulousness to "Marsha in Helena". As the compliments came, Cheryl started to wonder, when is this Cheryl's caramel corn? Cheryl decided the logical step was to ask Marsha the time frame of recipe acknowledgment. The answer, simply Marsha stated, was three years. So as I sat in Cheryl's office still a bit rushed from sugar and curiosity, Cheryl in her sturdy and deliberate tone said, "Emily, people have even threatened to break into my house when they know I am not home to try and steal the recipe." I just nodded and said "whoa, that's serious." Yet in my mind, I could see someone dressed in black, searching through a drawer of recipes and a furrowed brow under a black hat change with intense relief in finally finding a fix to what may seem on the surface as just caramel corn. But really, it's caramel crack.

And so, you may have guessed it, I won't be including Cheryl of Missoula's caramel corn, but maybe for some of you the loyalty of recipes only needing three years will free you this coming holiday season. No longer will you feel entangled with explanations or the obligatory need to write long titles on your jars of coveted homemade pear butter first made by your Aunt Rita. Remember, if it has been longer than three years you can take claim, sit with pride, watch how that sweet potato and cumin side dish is yours and answer, "why yes, I did make this. Would you like my recipe?"

Today I give you a recipe that I have been working on for some time and I think I may be close to wanting to lay claim as mine. I am on the pursuit of crafting a tangy, but home-style mac and cheese and I think I found the combination. Of course, I first adapted it from Bon Appetit, but was mostly inspired by memories of eating something similar back in Portland, Oregon at Montage. I tell myself, I only have three years before I can change the title to Aunt Amelia's mac n cheese. Until then, I will lay claim to someone else, keep cooking and remain modest with this hot dish. Enjoy.

Northern Italian Macaroni and Cheese

6 tablespoons butter, divided

1 cup onions, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 unbleached all purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

2 cups Fontal, finely grated ( Fontal is like an elegant Monterey Jack as my good friend Cicelia says)

2 cups goat cheese, crumbled

2 cups Parmesan, grated

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 pounds Rainbow Chard

12 ounces macaroni

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1. Melt three tablespoons butter in a large pot over medium heat.

2. Add onions and saute until translucent, about five minutes.

3. Stir in garlic, then flour and stir constantly for one minute.

4. Gradually whisk in milk. Cook whisking occasionally, until mixture begins to boil, about five minutes.

5. Add cheeses and stir until cheese melt, about two minutes.

6. Stir in cayenne and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 13x9x2 inch baking dish.

8. Cook chard in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about one minute.

9. Remove chard with slotted spoon and place in a colander and let chard cool.

10. Reserve pot with water and let it come to a boil and add macaroni.

11. Meanwhile squeeze water from chard and finely chop.

12. Cook macaroni until al dente, drain and stir macaroni in to warm cheese sauce.

13. Place half of macaroni in dish, smooth and layer chard.

14. Top with rest of macaroni and spread evenly.

15. Melt three tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan and then drizzle over panko and mix well.

16. Spread breadcrumbs on top of macaroni and bake for 40 minutes.

17. Let stand for ten minutes and serve.

Yields: I would say at least six hunger people who can take a lot of cheese

The Autumn Garden

Cool mornings with frost and afternoons with slow sun have always meant one thing for me: sweater weather. Contrary to poetical history, autumn is not a season of melancholy for me. Quite the opposite for I find myself more awake and more capable of sitting at my desk for longer periods of time. Maybe I don't feel sadden by this season for the mere fact that unlike during the era of Yeats and Rilke, I have central heating and can throw a sweater on with the faintest hint of a chill and get to writing. Writing seems to make more sense this time of year for when the sun is shinning and warming the rivers, I feel guilty taping out my fingers to syllables in my head instead of swimming and putting my face to the sun.

Plus, I think it is too expected to be melancholy during the fall. If you only see the shades of trees rising like some phoenix to only fall in order to die, then perhaps your life may feel like you are walking in some battle field, some lone survivor on a sidewalk crowned by maple and oak. Yet this seems rather Victorian and indulgent. What if the leaves were reminding us more to merely let go? What if sugar maples find pride in their dark red October hues and wait until winds lets them move on, or leave (no pun intended).

Growing up surrounded by birch and maple forests, I had certain favorite fall trees. Trees that during the spring and summer seemed to just meld themselves into the mass of woods, but once autumn came the slow sense of change reminded me to take notice of each individual tree, as if each species offers a slightly different shade to the whole horizon. I like to watch time unfold itself in colors. As if slow moving waves reach their crest and then fall into sand, each tree peaks and then fades into just bare bark and limbs. Winter ready.

I haven't been to a more autumnal place than Poland. It wasn't the contrasts of color as much as it was the shades of gold that seemed to rise out of all the fields and cobblestone city gardens. Gold against brick or warn out grey blocked houses, gold in forests outlining smoke choked cities, gold in a single tree outside my class room window. And at night, the shades of rich yellow under lights illuminated streets and lightened shadows. It was a time of such light in what has been to easily seen as such a grey country.

The golden autumn of Poland wasn't just a time for trees, but also lovers. I recall public gardens being a common meeting place for dates. Some man wearing what sadly seemed like his dead uncle's suit with a long stemmed rose, would pace and run his thumbs under each fingers' nail, walking off nerves and anticipation. You see, when you live at your house (which often consisted of three rooms including the bathroom) with your entire family; physical space is an issue. So public gardens were open spaces waiting to be filled with couples entangled on park benches. PDA or public displays of affection in this context probably felt more private than stealing kisses over the kitchen table with your grandmother staring at you over a plate of boiled potatoes.

And so this poem I include today may not have autumn shades, but the autumnal flavor of rising from some fall. My favorite kind of love poem. Enjoy the leaves, the small reminders of learning to let go, and to embrace the season of sweater love.

In the Public Garden

Every gym class, Stevie Flowers pissed

his corduroys. He hated dodge ball,

stood in the corner or hid

from the bigger boys who broke

anything or anyone small.

He read Make Way For Ducklings

sat on his knees with Buddha's

slow smile. I knew even then

he would be the one who loved me.

I still remember the metallic

taste of the bat that summer

we played softball. He cupped my face

while my nose bled, told me later

he'd tape my glasses.

But later it was others who stood

outside my window, holding

a book of Yeats, fly open

with a half-drunk grin.

It's always a simple request

at first.

In the Boston Commons, I pause

at the ducklings in bronze, still

like the boy who read to me.

Somewhere there's a man

I'd never think to run from.