pound cake

An excerpt from This Life, by Rita Dove

My grandmother told me there'd be good days
to counter the dark ones, with blue skies in the heart
as far as the soul could see. She said
you could measure a life in as many ways
as there were to bake a pound cake,
but you still need real butter and eggs
for a good one — pound cake, that is,
but I knew what she meant. She was always
talking around corners like that;
she knew words carried their treasures
like a grape clusters around its own juice.


Read the whole thing here.