Though the weather has not
chilled enough to holler Soup!,
on November’s first Sunday night,

after chopping up the Holy Trinity
of Soup, as my friend Lisa taught me—
celery, carrots and onion—

I dig out the new big pot, locate
the olive oil and seasonings, mostly
ignored since last soup season.

Tomorrow is Momday, as Mondays
were for years, the day I’d drive my
90-something mother to the gym,

the chiropractor, lunch at her favorite
restaurant, the grocery store for liters
of Moscato and maybe, nearing home,

up the hill into the state park to check
on the lake she and Father moved my
sister and me to in the summer of 1966..

Now, almost 60 years later, it’s officially
fall. She will want soup. Or someone will,
I think, as I sauté the Holy Trinity.

Certainly my fella whom tomorrow
I will drive to and from the “mean lady
who’s gonna pull my teeth,” he moaned

about this trip to the dentist he loves
“most of the time.” I’m sympathetic,
but this man is no lightweight,

having survived cardiac arrest, then
resurrection by defibrillator, followed
by open heart surgery six years ago.

Nonetheless, I’ve already set eight
little cups of custard in his fridge,
made from his late mother’s recipe.

Tomorrow I’ll bring split pea with ham,
his favorite. Hers, too. Ma, if I knew your
address in heaven, I’d get soup to you.

Neither of us imagined that—of the two
of us cooking-impaired women who’d
rather read—I would become

a purveyor of comfort food for my
dear ones. But here I am, still
a beginner in the kitchen at 67,

but wicked good at a few things,
especially Grandma’s brownies,
which, when I think of it,

with the soup and custards—
the greatest of these, after all, is love—
makes a pretty fine Holy Trinity, too.