*
Michael Todd Steffen is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. His poetry has appeared in journals including The Boston Globe, E-verse Radio, The Lyric, The Dark Horse, Ibbetson Street, The Concord Saunterer, and POEM. Of his second book, On Earth As It Is, now available from Cervena Barva Press, Joan Houlihan has noted Steffen’s intimate portraits, sense of history, surprising wit and the play of dark and light…the striking combination of the everyday and the transcendent.

Dear Friend

Michael Steffen

This morning couldn’t help thinking of you
and your Romaine salads, the scallion roots
you’d start to grow in the tall glasses of water
giving yourself over to the honest labor
of transplanting the long translucent “fingers”
as you called them into the peat and perlite
of the window planter. There are all sorts of these things
by habit we throw away we can recycle
gardening our garbage, our treasures—the hours
I might have composted sleeping in this morning.
Thoreau, remember? How to kill a little time
without injuring eternity? I stand on the shore
of that ocean of time which your recent move
has placed between us, shipwrecked as I feel
looking for your reflection in the kitchen window
with a glimpse of the city’s rooftops leafing into light.
I have some bread left I’ve put in the oven for croutons.
There’s vinegar. Oil, garlic, the peppery mustard
and sour cream for the dressing with its mixture
of tang and spice like differences in friendship
to waken the tongue, blanketed in the pearl
of whatever it is, a little mute, wholly mutual
that sends you this good morning and its pathway
hunger to share with you, all with a noon’s menu.

— Michael Todd Steffen