Poetry from the kitchen #8

Chicken stock

Begin, rinsing foods we do not eat:
onion skin, broccoli stems, parsley stalks.

They drown factually, cooking:
unreal green.

I push a chicken’s carcass underneath
[simmer gently, for clearer juice];
the long neck-bit, the giblets.
Peppercorns, whole.
A clove, or two.

Not grey, but a weak winter-field-gold
is what I aim for;
like when the ground is cold, and the sun walks
through the day’s armour and disarray.
[Could use as a soup’s lace, for instance.]

Note this for character, in a stock —
The bones old, think, brittle flutes of empty marrow,
gossamer parts of the meat,
its muscular garments reduced to thread.

Strained and cooled, it grows close to glue —
Set, tapped, quaking, intact
(under its lid of yellow fat).