Monday, April 21, 2014

Havarti in the Highest


Is it the way the word rolls off the tongue
that delights the senses even before
the cheese is chosen? I'll have Havarti,
I tell this deli sous chef, his knife poised
for a lasting imprint on the block
of buttery goodness about to climax
my roast beef sub. Danish
slices topping 100% purebred
American Angus, garnished with dark
brown English mustard. My taste buds
jealously watch the wheat roll warming,
the cheese bonding and bubbling
while my ears ring with "Havarti!"

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Who Planted Those Grapes?


Clipping loaded stems from the bunch, tasting
succulent globes, skins stretched on juiced
flesh, I live only in the moment. Whose hands placed
the cuttings into the moist earth, tended and watered
virgin plants, shepherded creeping tendrils into fruition?

Opening the new jar of olives, I ponder the trees
in a sandy land far removed from the verdant green
of my Louisiana landscape.  The interconnection
between hands that open and hands that plant,
hands that harvest and hands that bottle

provides the link, the connection, establishes
the patterns that reveal our selfhood, our identity
on a plane, plumbed, sheered, consummate,
completely beyond our own finite consciousness,
enigmatic as the patterns of DNA to an ancient seer.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Longing for Cheese


And the women come and go
            speaking of Vermeer.
They wonder why his women
            yearn for cheese. Take
the Girl with a Pearl Earring.
            Her full face shows she's
no stranger to the fat content
            of good Dutch cheese.
Mouth partly open, her eyes
            linger on the plate
just beyond the viewer's eye,
            mouth watering with
the taste remembered over time.
            His full-figured Milkmaid
pours cream and thinks of cheese
            she will add to the crusty
bread in the basket of her table.
            Even the woman, fingers
on the virginal's keyboard,
             in The Music Lesson
can't wait to cut the cheese.