The Optimism of French Toast
No matter how many years since
the first bite passed my lips, that business
of eggs and day-old bread, ribbon of syrup,
fireflies of butter sparking my tongue's buds,
I think of my Arcadian ancestors
landing on the shores of Nova Scotia, dragging
logs from the deep woods, fashioning windows,
hanging laundry from two oars dug into sand —
the flags of domesticity flayed by the wind.
I see the fruits of their labor rise up
from the marshes: beets, parsnips, cabbages
and corn, and the wheat they ground
to powder and baked into bread.
And the chicken shook out egg after egg
we broke into shallow bowls, beat
with a spoon, each thick slice dipped
into that loom of albumen, chalazae and yolk,
then laid on a scrim of grease in the pan
where it sizzled its solitary song.
How could these French be
considered a scrouge, their houses
burned to the ground they had worked,
forced to take the tangled circuity
of dirt roads with nothing but what
they could carry on their backs? No time
for funerals, no place to go. And yet
here I am at my kitchen table listening
to Clifton Chenier on the radio, daughter
of a people who refused to die: sacks
of wheat on their shoulders, spoon
in a belt loop, sugar sprinkled in a pant cuff,
a sleeping chicken hidden under a coat.
____________________
Dorianne Laux
Life on Earth
Norton, 2024
