Spirit Cake

She always served the same cake,
Some kind of refrigerated, pineapply affair,
With an odd type of chocolate frosting
Encrusted with peanuts,
It was innocent enough,
Possibly naïve,
But she served it every High Holiday
To anyone who showed up,
Is this your Mother’s cake? They would ask,
Those in the know would laugh,
Pieces of the yellowish cake blowing out
Onto their plate,
Of course it’s Mother’s cake
They would cackle out,
Then reach for the cakeserver
Which was, of course, Mother’s, too,
A family heirloom,
A tradition of cakery to say the least,
A Betty Crocker original they would say,
Pronouncing the O in original as a long vowel
Then laughing again,
Blowing brown frosting out at each other,
Wiping tears of chocolate and peanuts from their eyes,
Then one day the Spirit Cake levitated
Three feet in the air and exploded,
After that she served Sara Lee.