number 45

food & thought
It was a luncheon, full-on, with a line to be served and a spigot for the iced tea and I sat next to folks I didn't know yet, we were all there to hear about this church, what they believed, what was available to us if we decided to pursue official membership there, and I ate salad like a man still learning to, and I ate potato soup as well, made by ladies with sweet hands and hearts that gave up their Saturday to feed us and there was bread, which I loved most of all and while we ate, he told me about the book he's been working on for the last year and half, and about the just-before-sleep vision that he had that started it all and I listened and spooned my soup and I thought about all the things we wear, and what I had on with my collar turned up, and I thought too about all that gurgles and surges under all my surfaces, clear to my marrows.

Self Strata
Layered under my blue shirt
is a well-washed red one, too.
Below that -- skin, bleached white bones.