I learned to cook in the year after the divorce,
Which is either cliché or just the force
Of necessity applied to the situation —
A man alone in a kitchen, the narration
Of the divorce requiring the acquisition
Of the skill that had been the partition
Of the household labor he hadn’t held.
I’m not a natural but I’m not a disaster either —
I’ve achieved the specific breather
Of the competent amateur, the man
Who can feed himself with a plan
And some attention, who’s built a repertoire
Of the reliable: the specific war
Chest of the dishes that I can execute.
Learning to cook in the year after the grief —
Whether the divorce or the death, the relief
Of the skill is the same: the specific agency
Of feeding yourself, the adjacency
Of the practical and the therapeutic,
The therapeutic
Daily practice of the making of a meal.
He taught me one dish before he died — the chicken thing
He’d been making since before I could bring
The memory back far enough, the specific
Chicken that was his vernacular
Response to almost any occasion,
The persuasion
Of the dish that he’d perfected across fifty years.
I make it now in the rotation of the reliable —
The specific dish is viable
In my kitchen, which I know would please him,
The specific evidence that the seism
Of his passing left some practical deposits
In the man who carries the composite
Of his influence into the ongoing.
I’ve been teaching my daughter the chicken thing —
The specific steps, the specific ring
Of the timing he described, the way the smell
Changes at the moment, the tell
Of when to turn the heat down — and the specific
Vernacular of the dish moves into the regular
Practice of the next generation, the grief as recipe.