Vegetable Soup

Any root will do as long as it has lived a full enough

life nestled in earth-belly

 

has been a wide enough cistern for the making of sugar and bitters

shape shifting deliciously in the underworld

 

and when it is time, a green crowning of shoots

singing to the hungry, offering

 

to be seen, picked, peeled

diced, liquified, thickened, united

 

with ginger, garlic, a whole clan of green cousins

merging, conspiring in the large bellied pot,

 

peelings scattered to become the renewed

soil and isn’t a recipe a map to a homeland and isn’t a recipe

 

a theology of formation, the physics of

heat and cooling, a song of return,

 

a Kaddish rising as steam, one cup mourning

one cup celebration, ready to serve

 

ladled into bowls topped with a drizzle

of olive oil, a few drops of lemon

 

juice, flaky salt, crushed chili

or some other desire.