Salad Days

We were not green in judgment or cold

in blood like Cleopatra in her youth

who still was ordering chopped radish

in her bowls back then,

the hearts all gone to pieces

next to the winter greens

that in our days we never had use for

so smitten were we with fire

and ovens that I was gravy in judgment,

which might not mean much

unless you’ve taken a spoon

of it and poured it back over a dumpling

shaped like your heart

so that it became even softer,

something you could not have thought possible.

you liked to say, and I agreed,

though it was not the news

from the outside I relished,

but the daily Extra! Extra! the light

of the morning brought to my attention

every time we woke in your house

or my house and my heart

— salty, risen — was warm

again in a way it hadn’t been for years.

Organ of passion, organ of righteousness

that has never had a single flavor cross its lips,

how could you know

how much I would miss the honey of those days,

her drizzle of it on the turkey bacon,

my cracking pepper up and down the pan,

the sweet meat of happiness

I would no longer let pass between our teeth.