Perhaps I was already full
when Danny offered me
a sweet potato pancake
for breakfast, but there
he was with a bowl
of homemade batter
and a cast iron frying pan
hot on the stove, and so
I did what I longed to do,
I said yes, yes to feeding
a hunger that has little
to do with food—
the hunger for someone else
to offer you something
they’ve made, the joy of sharing
a meal together, the honor
of being served. The fact
that the pancake was delicious—
both sweet and hot—
was a bonus. The salsa
he handed me fiery—
fantastic as long friendship,
fierce as gratitude, as love.
So, I see a significant difference between this version and the (original?) one posted in my email feed. That version has a different closing line: fierce as a cabal of love.
I do like you’ve added grace into the mix, and kept the “fierce,” but cabal is so very much the right word. It’s not that commonly-used of a word, which makes it a bit unexpected; it evokes a powerful image, a good thing for a closing line; you’ve turned its connotation on its head—instead of a sinister, cloak and dagger uprising, it’s one of love.
I ask that cabal be joined again with its love. Perhaps, “fierce as gratitude, as a cabal of love.”?
All that said, I love Danny—wish I knew him more/better; I love Art—I’m thinking he’s also there; and I love you and I love this poem of yours. I love how you take on two ways of being ravenous, two types of hunger. I love how you name what we’ve all done: being stuffed to the gills, yet our mouth, our heart ravenous for the sweet potato pancake being offered by a beloved, says, “Please, sir, I want some more.”