April 9: When all else fails, make pasta . . .

My daughter just got a pasta maker,
the old fashioned kind you
hunch over and crank the handle.
You slowly feed just-made dough through
this complicated machine.
Out the bottom
comes these rounded, fragile tubes,
lightly dusted with flour.

Toss into boiling water,
then dress the spaghetti with olive oil,
a little salt, and freshly-grated parmesan.
No need to measure.
Generations of cooks know who's
sitting down to eat.
Maybe sprinkle a few red pepper flakes,
and remember those Italian grandmothers
who taught us how to cook.

Pastamaker (Camp)

Maybe today, I thought, this poem will come easily. I have work to do, even if today marks 31 days we've stayed home and stayed safe as Governor Cuomo challenges us.

Robert Lee Brewer, of Poetic Asides at Writer's Digest, asks us to write an ekphrastic poem, that is write poem about a painting to dig deeper into its meaning, using any means you wish. As my mother would say, "Ooofta!" And then I remembered a photograph I found of an old woman making pasta, bent over, glasses askew, and my daughter's joy at making pasta with her new pasta maker.