The Baker of Pies

This trip Rose bakes pumpkin pies;
She is never so happy as when transmuting
Dough and sugar. How many cherry, peach,
Pumpkin and apple pastries have fissioned
From her eighty-three-year-old fingers?

Last August it was deep-dish blueberry
Made for her elder son.
But the pie leapt from its dish,
Nearly scalding her leg; left
A purple double-helix on the carpet.

Today I am raking leaves; carrying on
Conversation with the sycamores.
They signal they can smell the spice,
Sugar and pumpkin working their alchemies.

Thirty miles northeast from the family duplex
Hanford tank-sludge cooks and shifts
From stable to unstable—the ticking nuclides
Not musical, unlike the drum-brushing branches.

AEC/DOE might have put mother
In charge of a tank farm.
No crust would have been unpinched;
No detail overlooked; no graft or lies.

Inside the house a mild November
Afternoon, an old woman with a nose
For chemistry has her hand on the controls;
Sniffs the wind and watches the boilers
As we sail out of the Twentieth Century.

—Richland, 1998
– William Witherup