Original Poetry Sunday - Pasta Alleluia – the Poem

It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for (more) original poetry. This week’s selection was written almost exactly a year ago & was one of a set of seven poems all based on a “food” theme. As is the case with many of the sequences I’ve written in my time, I intended more, but that didn’t happen. Pasta Allelulia is a real recipe, as regular readers here know. You can find the recipe in non poetic form here.

Please be sure to visit other Original Poetry Sunday participants:

Amazing Voyages of the Turtle
Apogee Poet
Poetikat’s Invisible Keepsakes
Premuin T.
Secret Poems from the Times Literary Supplement
Yes is Red

Kat’s poem at Poetikat & René Wing’s prose poem at Yes is Red are both from yesterday, but they count in my book. Also, please be sure to wish Kat a happy 2-year blog anniversary!


Pasta Alleluia


Lots of people I haven’t understood in this lifetime—
& I haven’t seen olive trees gesturing in breezes
overlooking the Mediterranean like evacuees from Bullfinch

except unmoving—the people I haven’t
understood in this lifetime but loved—& holding my hand a few
inches over the sauté pan I can tell the oil’s ready for the

garlic Eberle grew in the two rows she harvests in June—because the
people I loved I haven’t understood, I was busy thinking
about them—lightly browned, the garlic’s set aside, & chopped morels

our friends left for us added now with ground pepper—of all the
people I haven’t understood & have said I loved
—as the mushrooms wilt & soak up oil—

I haven’t walked where the forest burnt last summer, that’s
where the morels have sprouted amongst the blackened
lodgepole pine—of all the people I’ve loved

nearly the best & almost the worst & not
understood for a minute—& Eberle’s pensive in her garden
picking the spring mix—a simple balsamic dressing—of

all the people I haven’t understood & wanted to—
the chopped Kalamatas add lots of salt—about two dozen—&
the pine nuts & the oregano I never measure—

& Dani says, “I wouldn't wish writing poetry on anyone"—
tho there’s nothing else just now—keep the water at
a simmer so it’s ready for the pasta & it’s time

now—of all the people I haven’t loved well—a
guitar song I wrote for Eberle after a quarrel—the lonesome
train tracks leading everywhere past the Russian Olive groves
          including

Los Angeles—on the guitar she gave me like
love itself she gave me—of all the people I’ve loved yes I’ve loved
some of them like a guitar perhaps—salting the water—

& there’s another language amongst people who love
& a language to speak about it—talking all night like an
alleluia like a mandocello—

the people I haven’t understood—the pasta’s drained &
tossed—this is so far the hardest poem
before the next poem in this lifetime

John Hayes
© 2008-2009