Dolmades
Before a family gathering or event,
on the spacious kitchen table,
there would be a cultural sacrament of sorts—
something that represented more than
the preparing food:
The rolling of dolmades.
Grape leaves with the shiny side down,
the veins showing up as if evidence
of the life that moves within them
as they're then rolled and hidden within
the heartiness of rice and meat,
as if that's the way in which we fold
and make neat the generational pain of long ago,
and of more recent decades too,
the kind of which sometimes stays quiet
but are passed along in recipes of perseverance.
Or sometimes they are the way
in which joy is made, an affirmation
that we keep rolling along,
the sentiment that we're wrapped
in the ancient spirit of Dionysus
with abundance,
with the resilience of the grape vine
that grows in all kinds of weather.
And, whoever is in this sacred culinary space
while the leaves are rolled
partakes in the bonding and understanding
of all of this—
and the truth that this is our lifeblood,
that this is how we roll up and down the hills
of this vastly
uninstructed journey of life.