Scratch
I rode with Grandma to church
in her clattery sedan,
guarding a tin of biscuits
I had watched her bake earlier.
We listened to a cassette
of Scourby narrating
the six days of creation
in a mid-Atlantic drone.
“It was just like us back there,”
she said through the fall of man.
I had stood by the counter
while she added buttermilk
to shortening, flour, and soda
and stirred circles with her hand.
She said the dough would be right
when it held a wooden spoon.
“He didn’t have recipes.
He worked from scratch, like I did.”
I got an image of God
in a pocketed apron
setting down a few brown bags
of groceries by the sink.
He left the biscuits to cook
and straightened, hands behind Him.
I remember being eight
and that I would get carsick
looking at the pecan groves,
where the Methodist church stood,
and the fields dotted with cows
on either side of the road.
It was easy to think God
made it all, and made it good.
