95 ~ Harvest feasts, harvest gifts, and the universe of shimmer

Happy Harvest “Supermoon” everyone. A nice thing about producing your own food is the opportunity to share it – a gift of the local, made by your own hand. And under these magical days of September, with the gardens in their last great push of offerings, and trout season still on, with the streams more fishable under cooler skies, it’s a good time to be harvesting and giving.

Last week a friend from Bainbridge Island, Washington, Jim, visited me at the house for the first time. I made an autumn harvest lunch for us – nearly everything from the land here (or from my nephew Keegan’s land in Italy).  Our menu (above) was sliced cucumbers and dill with sour cream from my neighbor’s cows, tomatoes with basil and Keegan’s olive oil, fried wild brown trout, and new potatoes with rosemary.

To tie up these gifts at the end we dove into some apple pies I’d baked (my coy apple trees finally produced a good crop this year). The sweetspot I’ve found for a good crust is 3/4 good butter and 1/4 goose fat – the latter saved and frozen from my annual tradition of roasting a goose in mid-winter.

 

With the end of Wisconsin’s trout season approaching (October 15), I’ve been getting some last licks in on smoking trout (and some smaller creek chubs caught while prospecting for trout). It’s a simple process on my Weber grill, and the end product is delicious, and easy to either store or share with others.

When Jim arrived last week, I’d just taken a batch of trout off the smoker. When he looked at the plate of bronzed beauties in the kitchen, he scrolled through his phone and read this, to me and to the trout. Enjoy, as I very much did.

A Display of Mackerel

by Mark Doty

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

 

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales'

radiant sections

 

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

 

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soap-bubble sphere,

 

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

 

distinguished from the other

--nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

 

they're all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfillment

 

of heaven's template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

 

at this enameling, the jeweler's

made uncountable examples

each as intricate

 

in its oily fabulation

as the one before;

a cosmos of champleve.

 

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

 

of shimmer--would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

 

to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even on ice

 

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don't care they're dead

 

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn't care that they were living:

 

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

 

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

 

which is the price of gleaming.

Previous
Previous

96 ~ A hoot! (or two)

Next
Next

94 ~ Some autumnal learning opportunities