​Toast
 
 
Some days, I need my toast fully loaded:
peanut butter, honey, maybe a thick
slice of banana splayed across seductively.
Perhaps you know those mornings,
when you require some sweet thickness
to fill up an emptiness in your bones
or to round off the sharp corners of a
blustery, steel-grey sky. Perhaps yours
is a full-fat latte or a bacon sandwich.
Perhaps yours is the K-Rock Morning Zoo.
 
But today, when the sun shines
with such blue ferocity
that even clouds dare not intrude,
when the song of every bird seems
sharper, ringing with purpose, and
every leaf vibrates with intensity--
when you find that you have awoken
to a world that is fully, burstingly alive--
then only a thin scrape of butter, the birdsong,
and a cup of bitter, jasmine tea.


To be published by Your Daily Poem, Sept. 6, 2016




Strategies for Cassoulet


The bean, the chicken, the sausage, the duck,
the carrot, the herbs, the onion, the wine,
the brown, the simmer, the bake, the rest,
the smell, the anticipation, the sample, the desire,
the bread, the butter, the fork, the wine,
the taste, the savor, the meal, the fill,
the craving, the question, the weakness, the return,
the serving, the expansion, the pain, the regret,
the meal, the wine, the laughter, what is life,
without regret?