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.

number 44

food & thought
He wanted to know how this chinese restaurant could serve the same rice on the same plates ordered from the same menu and have it taste... better... just better than the rest, and I thought of some possible reasons, but just kept chewing, smiling and enjoying my curried chicken and all the tiny vegetables like the mini corn on their mini cobbs -- loving it all except the five dime sized water chestnuts that I left in a pile and we talked about what seems important to us these days, my brother and me and we talked about the work we'd cracked open together this week and I was glad for the view of the street, and wasn't unhappy to see the lady that took our order again -- I like the way she smiles and how she talks and it was good and so much sweet tea to split my guts and across the table from me this man whose dream for work has been through so much fire and refinement and iterations in the last 10 years, but there we were, talking about ways it might happen, and we prayed, too.

Phoenixification
At the bottom of his sea --
his heart's mysterious trench,
unquenchable embers burn.

number 43

food & thought
Just down my road in a direction I hadn't driven it before was a mountain and after driving it up, straight up into the clouds that filled my world up with snow and ice this morning I turned my car and moved back down the grade, stopping to see the shrouds wrapping the landscape across the valley and on the way home finding an Amish store I stopped and bought a small round loaf with good grains and seeds and some farmers cheese and some jerky and a bite of fudge too and tried to eat as slowly as I could make myself thinking about my morning shower where I fell down in the steam and hiss of such a powerful realization of the death in my limbs, and the life, too.

Three Days
We are the tomb he enters.
This skin will be rolled away --
wrestling until the dawn.

number 40

food & thought
It was no accident at the bar that the dinner between the three of us was a sliced loaf of bread, a bit of oil and salt and we raised cold mugs of beer, clinking, and at some point laid things down on the table -- difficult things out of our shadows and things we couldn't explain and so much we'd rather not remember and in those moments blood was drawn, something thicker than blood even, spirits -- spirits were rent, and we shook on that and we sensed a brotherhood defining itself, taking shape and taking oath around that table and we walked away, my own heart pondering the implications of bonds that will go with us, beyond our deaths.

Bound
Share your shame and shoulder your
brother's: our trust demands trust.
We press on, a bloody band.

number 39

food & thought
Bowl full of lumpy breakfast again, but in a different kitchen as I stood there in the morning quiet talking with a mouth mindful of the heads still sleeping in my brother's house -- we passed new bits of news back and forth across our coffee mugs, glad to be there and giddy on yet another first day with such warm, familiar smiles and scenes out the windows.

Just Ahead
We take quiet steps up to
the edge of what yawns before
our nervous guts, racing blood.

number 38

food & thought
Some times the new food works out and you know it in the first bite, and some times it doesn't work out at all and you can smell that coming and then some times, like tonight, you finish what you want, put the rest in a tupperware bowl for lunch tomorrow and you still aren't sure if it worked, but it was pasta with peppers, the tiny skinny green chiles and a round red one and slices of discounted mushrooms and barely enough snow peas to register at the grocery store register and then some boiled pasta spirals and two cans of albacore tuna and much kosher salt and black pepper I could smell over everything as I stirred it up, dubious looks falling out of my face and into the wok with a little more olive oil and I chewed and thought about how busy the day had been, how many words I'd made and about the phone call I got where I had none of the right words: "Don't hang up," she said and I didn't -- not for a minute until after we'd cracked what was quiet between us all this time.

Hi     Lo
Some days racing boldly on,
Some waiting for things to break,
I grind my far-apart gears.

number 37

food & thought
There was a blueberry bagel with a little butter, a little toasted, too, which was nice because besides that there was more yogurt with some of the last of that healthy cereal that tastes like healthy cereal and in the middle of that breakfast, the day coming alive outside the window, I remembered my fascination with heat these last few months, my encounters with it, and I had a gen-u-ine moment with that fascination as I made an important realization about the connection and distinction between heat and things that are hot, which makes heat and so I wrote that down.

Heat
It's an energy pounding
out of something hot. We see
it shimmer, watch it wither.