Feasting in the Face of it
  By Page Lambert

At the King Soopers’ deli yesterday
behind the glass counter, shriveled chicken wings,
so like my mother’s thin shoulder blades
jutting from the worn edges of her spine,
lay half-price beneath the hot light.
She’d wanted only tender breast meat,
a simple request, but more than I could grant.

Now, in these final days, she asks for Gerber daisies,
yellow and orange. I snip their stems
turn them so that the flare of each blossom
opens
in her direction.

Last night I fixed us wild salmon and sushi rice with butter and salt,
garlic bread with olive oil for dipping. I slipped a slice
of garden tomato from the western slope
where things ripen early
onto my plate. Later,
the remnants of my appetite seemed like sacrilege,
the red juices and yellow seeds,
a single
kernel
of rice.