Love Letter

Bananas that, when I last looked, were green
Have now turned yellow and developed freckles;
Observing colleagues year by year, I've seen
Jekylls transform to Hydes, and Hydes to Jekylls.
And history and science speak as one:
All creatures and communities will morph
To something else; when it grows old, our sun
Will swell and then collapse to a white dwarf.

Yet you're here: with great wooden forks, you toss
The just-dressed salad while I undertake
To judge and season a tomato sauce
Now bubbling thickly like a lava lake.
You say the broccoli will need lemon juice;
I nod and, oven mittens donned, transfer
The kettle to the sink and introduce
The steaming pasta to the colander.

Though fruit may spoil and species go extinct,
We have connected; and in spite of change,
The world has reappeared each time we've blinked;
And though it ought to, it does not feel strange
To occupy a kitchen and a scale
Between the subatomic and the vast.
See, even as I turn to serve our meal,
Your memory holds the backward glance I cast.