Savory Versus Sweet

It isn’t the marriage that maps your course,

only the divorce.

One house has become all penance,

the other indulgence.

You struggle to resist

what has grown to feel illicit,

an appetite, threatening obsession,

for delectation.

What grows on trees tastes unfinished,

an imitation of  artifice.

What court determined

that sweetness be earned?

Some chef  with too much power

once called mixing salt and sugar

a form of   barbarism.

His decree, like any fashion,

should have evaporated,

but someone recorded it,

so centuries, a continent, away,

your whole body hesitates

to sweeten, even slightly,

chicken soup or broccoli.

There’s enough complication

in houses, in nations.

His laws are as good as blue.

The offender isn’t you.