Cast Iron Pot
Poetic Prose of Memory (Creative Non-Fiction)
After our meal, I placed my hands on the smooth, rounded sides of the still-warm black stew pot that had simmered our stew. I lingered there thinking of its heavy iron, forged billions of years ago in the furnace of an ancient star. It is elemental and kin to the iron atoms coursing through our branching bloodways.
Iron in our blood carries oxygen to every tiny cell, where it engages in an alchemy for life energy when it mixes with glucose distilled in the body from the food we eat — food like the sunset-colored root vegetables that we ate for supper. I ladled the leftovers into a container, with gratitude for the assurance of an easy future meal.
I went to the kitchen sink to wash the pot. On its floor, there was a thin, blackened rime of carbon from simmering a little too long on the flames. I offered the pot our everyday miracle of fresh, hot water, and ran my fingers over the rough patches, scrubbing until the bottom was once again smooth. Afterwards, I saw the diffuse reflection of the kitchen light, unbroken on its newly dried, matte surface.
I suddenly remembered the day, many years ago, when I bought this pot for a dollar at a resale shop up north. For a moment I see the sun-kissed faces and lively eyes of my young daughters holding their own thrift store…
