Posts Tagged ‘longing’

The Golden One

My father always told me “Onion bagels grow on trees”
And so I spent my school-age years amassing expertise
So I could scour the continents and sail the seven seas
Searching for the only plant that would my soul appease

As time elapsed the hope I had was pushed aside by doubt
For I’d found nothing even though I’d traveled all about
And so I grabbed my father and irately I did shout
He said “I meant to say they don’t – did I leave that word out?”




08

02 2009

Green Onion Bagel (II)

Buried at the bottom
of the bin
it waits
watching
bagel after bagel
(after bagel)
chosen above,
clutched to chests,
cherished, chewed
loved
like it longs to be

and it wonders

What makes those guys
so goddamned special?




27

01 2009

Praise Song for the Bagel, A Poem for Watching Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration on TV

Each morning we go and do our business,
we flush and we jump in the shower
or not, drying and then dressing.

All inside us is hunger. All inside us is
pang and rumble, yearn and ache, we
long for something touching our tongues.

Someone is scrambling an egg, boiling
water for coffee, Popping a Tart,
heating the things that taste better hot.

A woman in a hairnet waits on tables.
A line cook examines the melting butter.
A hostess says Please. Let me seat you now.

Say it plain: that many have slaved over this meal.
Sing the names of those who brought it here,
who plowed the fields, planted the crops,

picked the onions and the wheat, kneaded
batch by batch the glorious dough
they would then roll into perfect little rings.

Praise song for the bakers, praise song for the meal.
Praise song for every boiled little bite,
the chewing-it-up at kitchen tables.

Some live by you are what you eat,
others by an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
But what if the mightiest food is bagels?

Praise song for getting something in our stomachs.




20

01 2009

recipe

my mind is like an onion
so many layers to peel
my body’s mostly water
so it shouldn’t really feel
my soul is just like flour
always something to sift through
but my heart is like a bagel
with a hole in it for you





28

12 2008