My granny didn’t know she was serving Appalachia,

fine white diet of biscuits and gravy, potatoes and chicken,

punctuated by tomatoes the color of earth they grew out of,

corn eaten straight off the cob, beans as green as hills in spring.

 

She didn’t know the wrinkled globes of cantaloupe

ought to remind her of topography of mountain streams

refusing to flow either straight or smooth, that eating blackberries

was like swallowing the many-lobed words of Southern speech.

 

She didn’t know that tasting her fruit cobblers

was just as sweet as mountain air after a four o’clock rain,

or that pecan pie had a taste as deep as any mountain hollow

and like the mountains laid a claim that kept you coming back for more.

 

All she knew was to do as her granny had done. All she knew

was that anytime she called Supper, every chair was always full.

 

© by Scott Owens.

Used with the author’s permission.