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Editor’s Note: Chef and writer Shannon Hughes collaborated with poet Theresa Whitehill on a culinary poetry event commissioned by Stags’ Leap Winery in the summer of 2003. Following is the foreword introducing the poems and menu from that project.

The Heart’s Invention: Chef’s Foreword

“The field itself sprouts new forms,
while the camel dances over them, imaginary
plants no one has thought of,
but all these new seeds, no matter how they try,
do not reveal the other sun.
They hide it.
Still, the effort is joy,
one by one to keep uncovering
pearls in oyster shells.”

            —Jalal al-Din Rumi

You can smell it first, as the light becomes closer and warmer and small tendrils of grasses and fern appear in their timid arrival. There are the birds that return to the trees in the morning, and the winds that bring the storms all winter change their course, swirling left and right from the south to the north. There is a quickening of the pulse and a welcomed, strange anxiety that sits in your belly and often your heart will race as you see the first buds of the willow and alder that flank the rivers and marshes.

The Greening of the Earth.

This pulsing of life and uncontrollable whimsy open the door for Spring...and her arrival of sweetness and renewal and life force spin us as humans into an annual carnival of excitement and passionate sparking and hope. We believed that all the darkness would finally leave and the coldness would be eclipsed by the generous warmth of the Vernal Equinox. We know that we did survive the darkness and the months without stone fruits or roses and we revel in all the great wonder of this intelligent force we call Nature.

The Heart's Invention was born of this energy. Theresa's poems of pregnancy and renewal and hope inspired me to call in the textures and flavors of the first offerings of Spring, respectfully honoring the stragglers of Winter and celebrating our excitement of another chance to visit our hearts desires. To revisit the sensual universe of scent and flowering and bearing fruit.

We saw the quiet stillness of winter, mists in the valley that cloaked the orchards. Trees that will soon blossom and bear fruit, though still dormant, with bare branches, are speaking in whispers the language of cycle and change.

Secrets of Spirits that will grace us as humans with an event that will never cease to astonish and inspire the most intense primal surge of longing and anticipation.

The sunrises in the morning are a riot of red and orange and you can feel the electricity of the Earth stirring and warming herself as if she were a soup now ready to serve.

This is our feast beginning, this budding and sprouting, this first fullness, this is where our hope begins and our language of healing becomes fluent.

Shannon Hughes
October 2nd, 2003
Point Arena, California
Visit Shannon's Blog, The Volcanic Muses

SCORN & WINE PRESS, June 2008 Edition
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