MINT MILANO

If a former Poet Laureate of the U.S.

can write a poem about a spiral notebook,

I can write about my Pepperidge Farm cookies,

chocolate mint Milano, a favorite in my family

for five generations. Each bite I take

is a journey back in time to Nana Ceil in New Jersey,

to her humor, her stories, the gold fillings in her teeth.

I imagine how amused she’d be if she could see my grandchildren

climbing on the counter to reach the cabinet

with the cookies she so loved. Cookies that traveled

from New Jersey to Vermont, where I grew up,

and now live with me in Los Angeles. Cookies—chocolate chip—

that grace the table of my sister when I visit her in Israel.

And, oh, their names: not just Milano, but Lisbon, Lido,

Brussels, Bordeaux, Chessman, Pirouette. Before I even taste them,

they carry me away. My children laugh when I read aloud

the text on the Geneva bag, like one smitten with love:

An enchanting textured collage of indulgent delight …

an adventure in texture. I turn the bag around

to continue with The Art of the Cookie, which tells us

to begin with a baker’s soul … embrace decadent cravings.

Open … Taste … Delight. How can I resist?

They may laugh, but my youngest son heads to the kitchen

when he comes to visit—straight to the cabinet with the treasures,

for he, too, has inherited the mint Milano gene.

What could be better than a legacy of sweetness

passed from parent to child, the chain unbroken,

the craving always strong? So strong that, at 68,

I think I want this every day until I die:

to sit mid-morning at a table by a window

with a cup of coffee and a plate

of chocolate mint Milanos.