Judith Kelly Quaempts
Translation
Summer mornings she spooned
thick country cream from a Mason jar
over raspberries picked that morning.
In winter I woke to cinnamon-spiked
rolls she baked at dawn.
Dinners of roast beef, mashed potatoes,
rich dark gravy; turkey tamales with
fat black olives. Homemade ice cream,
cakes with sugary icings.
All those years her love for me
through food. Too late I learned
that food was her second language,
the one she used to say I love you.
Judith Kelly Quaempts lives and writes in rural eastern Oregon. Her poems and short stories appear online and in print, most recently in an anthology published by the Poeming Pidgeon and in the Buddhist Poetry Review.
Summer mornings she spooned
thick country cream from a Mason jar
over raspberries picked that morning.
In winter I woke to cinnamon-spiked
rolls she baked at dawn.
Dinners of roast beef, mashed potatoes,
rich dark gravy; turkey tamales with
fat black olives. Homemade ice cream,
cakes with sugary icings.
All those years her love for me
through food. Too late I learned
that food was her second language,
the one she used to say I love you.
Judith Kelly Quaempts lives and writes in rural eastern Oregon. Her poems and short stories appear online and in print, most recently in an anthology published by the Poeming Pidgeon and in the Buddhist Poetry Review.