Secrets (for Mabel, friend and mother-in-law)

You teach me to make crepes from elderberry blossoms, cakes fragile as doilies, looking like Queen Ann's lace.

And we eat sunlight and spring flowers with pioneer women ghosts from your past.

You roll out flat noodles for golden soups with stories about Silver Range.

You let me make pilaf and dolma, smiling as if these were great secrets we exchange.