3 Cups red raspberries from a small Amish farm
1 Cup sugar gathered over time
from the nectar of hyacinths

A Tablespoon of never-chilled cream,
delivered with haste from the dairy barn

Place the ingredients
in a green ceramic bowl
and allow a small child with clean hands
to squeeze the mixture to the exact point where
the child tires of it..
Now, in high anticipation
and with a steady grasp, add:
Slowly, a quarter pound of butter
from the cream of a Jersey cow
fed only on coastal grass
and cracked sweet corn and..

Enough flour that,
when cooked over a fire formed of ash and live oak,
with just enough water to, when stirred,
it becomes a soft pearl-like paste..

Bend now and smell the raspberry melange one last time
before it is transposed
by slathering it with a wooden spatula
onto a crust of broken and crushed sugar cookies
pressed against the bottom and sides
of a cast iron skillet
and moistened with drops of newly stirred lemonade,

Now heat it through in a clay oven laid over the remnants
of the fire where wheat and water became one
and where you must stand now and allow
the ashes red glow
to transport you into the fondest memories
of your young adulthood.

When those memories have run their course,
the pie is ready to be removed
from the clay-contained heat
to a tabletop
upon which a red and white checked tablecloth
hemmed by someone’s grandmother before 1975 has been placed.
When the temperature of the pie is such that
the small child who stirred it
can place her tongue against the iron skillet
without harm and with delight,
the pie is ready

To be eaten.

 

words by David Weber 2007