Something is missing.
At least that is what
the palate says. Though
so much is here. Nudge
of onion. Wink of cumin.
The lentil’s warm shrug.
It is like, perhaps,
a person who, feeling
a certain emptiness
longs to fill it with
a voice. Though all
around him, voices,
not hers.
The soup is warm,
but not there the spark,
the sharp song, the crystalline chime.
It is easy to taste
mostly absence. We are
hard wired to want it,
to crave it, adore it.
We’ve evolved
alongside of our need.
No one wants to hear
they can’t have what
they want. We cannot
untaste what we’ve tasted.
They say we are mostly
made of emptiness.
Sometimes I understand.
you outdid yourself with this one. great for the end of the year. thanks for all the great words in 2012.
love
“Who would prefer the jingle of jade pendants when once he has heard stone growing in a cliff?” Lao Tzu
The power of Poetry http://www.powerofpoetry.org
and
Red Thread Gold Thread http://www.redthreadgoldthread.com
thanks dear Alan … did you get my message? I am so looking forward to coming your way! Many hugs to you.
I stumble over, “but not there the spark.” Maybe, “but the spark’s not there,” or “but there is not the spark”? I’m thinking the following line, “the sharp song, the crystalline chime,” is so lush, so “sharp” and “crystalline,” it deserves a smoother point of entry.
And is it absence that we’re hard-wired to want, crave, and adore? Seems otherwise, seeing how we’re adamant in filling the pocket of emptinesses in our days. I think it’s the absence of absence that we pursue. Then, perhaps, we ARE hard-wired, but our wiring goes awry.
Nifty connection, this poem. For this past Saturday’s soup at the hospital, I did a batch of veggie lentil. Now I know it was the proper choice(!)
Those words up front, nudge, wink, shrug — such a fine way to see the ingredients getting involved, and a great way to play against the overpowering muscle of salt that the title makes clear. ” It is easy to taste absence..” is a favorite line. I would, however, be tempted to toss out these lines:
No one wants to hear
they can’t have what
they want.
They dilute your lovely ending, mostly adding fiber, merely thickening the soup.
Standard fantastic. I wondered if you might allude to the lack of salt in a wound or perhaps adding Salt would wound. Mayhaps?