Epiphanies & Earthquakes

the French fell out of my toque last Sunday, right before Faspa at Grandma’s where she’d served Zwieback and jam she’d made with the Saskatoon Berries she’d picked until her hands resembled redemption

French had no place at a Mennonite table where consonants fight with the tongue and old ladies sport a single hair from the mole perched on the tip of their sinless pale lips

French deserves to be savoured, and should never have been kept under a toque

—hidden and starved of attention—

why, she is risqué, black lace and flirty; she needs the sun; she rolls better with copper-tanned vowels

French is smooth like warmed Brandy

with her, epiphanies bloom,

part the way with red-tipped nails revealing glistening pink petals 

and just as the tide knows

when to ebb, when to flow

tongue knows French

and how to make the earth quake...

to cause perceived barriers to dissolve

like sugar in hot coffee

and everything becomes sweeter and brighter,

like a poem just after it’s been read and the reader totally groks it

some things are meant to be shared