To Make a Salad


Choose your lettuce wisely, wash it well
and store in plastic sealed with a cushion of air.
The leafy greens that local growers sell
 
stay fresh a week on top refrigerator shelves.
So, move the milk and keep your greenery there.
Choose your produce wisely, store it well.
 
Use arugula, spinach, red chard, fennel
to lend your salads variety and flair.
Pick seasoning herbs organic grocers sell.
 
Pinch dill, mint, basil to release the smell
of Southern France—a heady treat to prepare
salad greens picked wisely and dressed well
 
in vinegar and oil.  What better than a salad to tell
the season’s story?  Add some nuts, perhaps a pear
and cheese to the greens that local growers sell.
 
Food is meant for pleasure, not just to quell
the hunger pain.  Cooking is an act of self-repair.
Choose fellow diners wisely, feed them well
from the plural bounty local growers sell.

from Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, PEARL Editions, 2004



To a Drumstick 

​
O creamy pleasure
atop a sugar cone
crowned in chocolate
studded with nutty buttons
chocolate plug at tip
perfection at lip
O flavor, form, and function
you are one!
Nutty Buddy, Drumstick,
by any name you are king
of ice cream novelties.
Good to the last lick.
Good to the last drip.

from The Congress of Luminous Bodies, Aortic Books, 2013