Carrying Food Home in Winter
Carrying Food Home in Winter - meaning Summary
Everyday Care as Transformation
The poem describes a domestic walk carrying groceries in winter and uses that simple chore to explore care, necessity, and transformation. The speaker questions what is needed materially and emotionally, while imagining food becoming bodies, actions, and thoughts. Small items—peels, bottles, an onion, a grapefruit—stand for nourishment, love, and creative change. The physical strain and imagined conversions turn a mundane errand into a meditation on sustaining intimacy and meaning.
Read Complete AnalysesI walk uphill through the snow hard going brown paper bag of groceries balanced low on my stomach, heavy, my arms stretching to hold it turn all tendon. Do we need this paper bag my love, do we need this bulk of peels and cores, do we need these bottles, these roots and bits of cardboard to keep us floating as on a raft above the snow I sink through? The skin creates islands of warmth in winter, in summer islands of coolness. The mouth performs a similar deception. I say I will transform this egg into a muscle this bottle into an act of love This onion will become a motion this grapefruit will become a thought.
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