I'm at the kitchen table writing a poem when suddenly my mother is in the room with me. Perched on a stool, she stirs a mixture for a cake   and I begin to smell its warm honeyed cream, follow the broad sweep of her wrist round and round the bowl. Her whole bench is a market stall.   Walnuts jostle peel, sultanas and raisins grow plump in steaming pans and syrup is dripping gold across its tin. Exuberant, unbridled, I hear   down thirty years her sifter rattle over flurried falls of flour. Then she sweeps aside the mounting drifts and with terse raps breaks   some eggs against her basin rim. Now she beats her spoon at sloppy yolks, tosses sugar in, smacks a slice of butter with her bare, pushing hand.   She's on a whirling chase. She savours every scent, puckers her nostrils, adds a pinch of ginger, a pinch of salt. Then back to whip the gritty   food, her shiny knuckles damp. She's over-flowing energy from her deep storage bin and pours it in a rush. I waited as a child for discarded   pots to lick, yet never learned her art of baking cakes. But I can relish words and taste her recipes again. I like to stir up images - give chase as she would do.

—Jan Hutchison 
   © 1997