To Love Life Terribly as I am Able

Sometime between Robert Frost and foie gras, a fierceness overtook the skies.

All was calm, all was warm when I walked into Chop Suey Books and found a crowd of poetry lovers waiting downstairs for the reading room upstairs to empty.

Right in front of me was the lovely poet who had earlier today posted to no one in particular, "Let's go to this. Tonight!" As she explained, it was not a message aimed at me since she never doubted for a second that I'd be in attendance.

The only thing better than a poet I don't know reading poetry to me is a man I do know reading poetry to me. For tonight, the strangers Emilia Philips and Nick McRae were my only offer.

Once upstairs, the room filled up so quickly that extra chairs had to be brought in, a sight that warmed my poetic heart.

Coming all the way from Texas, Nick McRae began with humor, saying, "Before Emilia comes up to read and blows you away, I thought I'd read a few poems."

After a poem about a dead deer, he commented how during the copy editing process of his book, Mountain Redemption, he'd noticed that there were lots of eviscerated deer in his poetry.

Probably not a realization most poets make.

He went on to recite, not read, a poem that he explained was not his own, but Elizabeth Bishop's 1953 "The Shampoo."

The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where, 
so straight, so soon?
Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin
battered and shiny like the moon.

That was followed by another of his own, this one a touching eulogy to his grandfather, Joseph, a man who once put out a cigarette on his wife's tongue and later lost an eye to a knife slip while working in a carpet factory (which he considered his "just desserts") before dying while on his International harvester tractor.

A recitation of Robert Frost's 1926 "Desert Places" followed, once again proving what a fine interpreter of others' works he was.

There was a poem he wrote interpreting the legend of St. Nicholas, the Turkish bishop, with the line, "Streets purpled by dusk."

Isn't it magical when colors become verbs?

"Metaphor" was inspired by Virginia poet Claudia Emerson and repeated a line from her poem of the same name, "But mine is in no way equal to hers," McRae warned us.

He labeled "The Cause" a little less grim and said it had been written only a couple of months ago, but what struck me was the line, "To love you terribly as I am able."

Okay, so I didn't know Nick, but what woman doesn't want to hear a man read a line like that?

Next came Emilia Philips wearing fabulous shoulder duster earrings and looking absolutely tiny after the bear-sized McRae.

She spoke of having come back to Richmond last fall for surgery and the poems that came out of that experience before reading some of them.

"The Rising Cost of Dying" took its title from a TV segment seen in the subterranean MCV cancer ward waiting room.

Her Dad was the inspiration for "The Episode of 'Cops" in Which My Father Appeared" and referenced, "No suicides on basic cable," "pantless perps" and "a Yogi Bear jelly jar of milk."

How long has it been since I thought of those cartoon-festooned jelly jars that families use for glasses? An eternity.

After seeing a roadside Jesus sign in Denton, Texas, she'd written "Roadside America," observing "apocalypse is a matter of scale" and mentioning "the parable of the paper doll."

After reading nothing but new work, she returned to her book Signaletics for her final poem, saying, "I tried to think of one poem from it that I'd never read in Richmond, but I couldn't find a single one."

As one who had heard her read before, I know I wouldn't have minded hearing something she'd previously read.  It's still a poet reading to me.

She settled for reading the book's final poem about a long ago trip to the VMFA to see "The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy," a gorgeous show I'd also seen, here, two years ago.

When Emilia had arrived, it had been prior to opening but she'd been allowed in and the docent had watched her like a hawk, as if she was going to make off with one of the foot and a half tall statues.

Her poem, "Mourner with Cow, Hands in Sleeve" chronicled  her visit, with evocative images such as "all the color of smudged lipstick" and "ravaged by revolution."

And isn't that part of the pleasure of poetry, to hear how poets combine words and evoke things I can't see or hear?

Soul fed, I went to leave Chop Suey only to see it had begun to rain lightly outside while we'd been upstairs lost in poetry.

No matter, I scurried to my car and headed it east to the Slip for dinner at Bistro Bobette.

A friend had thrown out a challenge and promised the winner he'd buy them a drink and it was time to collect.

I bet I didn't get a mile before the rain picked up considerably and by the time I reached the crest of the hill leading down toward the Bottom, all hell broke loose and horizontal sheets of rain were flying across Cary Street in front of me.

Suddenly my floral skirt and open-toed shoes seemed woefully inadequate.

After parking only semi-illegally (a tad too close to a corner in all likelihood), I waited for a break in the monsoon to high tail it up to Bistro Bobette to meet the friend known as Rainman.

The kind of guy who can tell you the exact date he met you, who won the World Cup in what year and other ephemera most people forget immediately.

I arrived before he did, a rarity, and ordered a glass of Chateau Ferry Lacombe "Haedus" Rose to sip while looking through the program for the upcoming French Film festival.

No doubt he was surprised to arrive early (as is his wont) and find me already in place, and we lost no time in ordering a pate plate and an octopus special.

It's best to get the ordering out of the way when there's much to discuss.

Starting with his earlier e-mail comment ("That thud you heard was me falling out of my chair"), we began a major catch-up session first on my life and then on his.

Changes abounded.

So did fabulous food. Baby octopus and lump crab found happiness together with seaweed salad and tiny radish matchsticks, tasting of cardamom and a hint of other Indian spices.

Doing the heavy lifting was a plate of house made pate and variations. Foie gras mousse with marmalade was obscenely rich with a silky mouth feel, earthy and deeply flavored venison pate stalked our palates, a terrine of sweetbreads and pork loin had a bottom of foie gars for a sensual melange of innards and turkey rilletes benefited from a liberal layer of fleur de sel.

Add in tangy gherkins and pickled grape tomatoes and I'm ashamed to say we couldn't even finish the last few bites. Not that we didn't give it our all.

At one point our always agreeable barkeep came over to check if we needed anything and my only request was music. Silence was suddenly reigning and who wants that when there' so much to talk and laugh about?

He rectified the situation tout de suite and the XX eased over the speakers like fine wine.

A TV director came in to have dinner at the bar and my friend showed me his IMD page, unbeknownst to the man. Tough for me to be impressed when I recognize no TV shows.

Soon after arrived a neighbor I'd met at Bobette years ago, a man responsible for the lighting and/or sound systems in dozens of restaurants around town.

He told a hilarious story about driving a big truck to Champlain and trying to go through a tunnel too small for the truck.

When a cop pulled him over he said he was certain he was about to get a ticket, but fortunately his girlfriend's large breasts distracted the cop and all he got was a "Welcome to New Joisey!" and the command to make a U-turn and go another way.

Never underestimate the power of a large rack.

Once the chef finished service, he came out and joined the lively conversation, telling tales of a former restaurant he worked at and its thrifty blue hair clientele, his favorite northern Virginia sushi restaurant and reminscing about the rillettes and gherkins his father made for him as a boy in Paris.

While my friend and I shared a lavender honey chocolate mousse, we talked about The Shack, which resulted in my getting to hear an Indian and a Frenchman try to pronounce Staunton in their best American accents.

You've never heard such flat vowels as they did their best redneck imitations. The Staunton-off was topped only by a discussion of what part of an Indian you feel for confirmation of his maleness and what part of a Frenchman.

Touching a forehead, "Wow, that's a really big brain you have, mister.

We closed out a perfectly lovely meal with blood orange sorbet so exquisitely textured that my friend deemed it a disservice to call such a creamy concoction sorbet.

With just enough sweetness on the finish and a bright wash of acidity to cleanse the palate, it was as beautifully colored as it tasted.

Tongues oranged by the night, a poet might say. Or this.

All the color of smudged lipstick tonight was on the chef's two cheeks, left there in a European kiss by a happy diner.