By Martha Silano
a gravy with little brown specks
a gravy from the juices in a pan
the pan you could have dumped in the sink
now a carnival of flavor waiting to be scraped
loosened with splashes of milk of water of wine
let it cook let it thicken let it be spooned or poured
over bird over bovine over swine
the gravy of the cosmos bubbling
beside the resting now lifted to the table
gravy like an ongoing conversation
Uncle Benny’s pork-pie hat
a child’s peculiar way of saying emergency
seamlessly with sides of potato of carrot of corn
seamlessly while each door handle sings its own song
while giant cicadas ricochet off cycads and jellyfish sting
a gravy like the ether they swore the planets swam through
luminiferous millions of times
less dense than air ubiquitous impossible to define
a gravy like the God Newton paid respect to when he argued
that to keep it all in balance to keep it from collapsing
to keep all the stars and planets from colliding
sometimes He had to intervene
a benevolent meddling like the hand
that stirs and stirs as the liquid steams
obvious and simple everything and nothing
my gravy your gravy our gravy the cosmological constant’s
glutinous gravy an iridescent and variably pulsing gravy
the gravy of implosion a dying-that-births-dueodenoms gravy
gravy of doulas of dictionaries and of gold
the hand stirs the liquid steams
and we heap the groaning platter with glistening
the celestial chef looking on as we lift our plates
lick them like a cat come back from a heavenly spin
because there is oxygen in our blood
because there is calcium in our bones
because all of us were cooked
in the gleaming Viking range
of the stars
It’s All Gravy was originally published in Cincinnati Review.