Love Letter

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

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.


The New York Sun

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