memory

some tastes also have the taste of past tastings.
this hot mulled cider is like that. it tastes of juicy
autumn apples – ones upstate new york
i picked once. it tastes of their grit, their skin,
their way of shining in the slightly dulled autumn
air breezing between stalls around fourteenth street.
i can taste the spices, cinnamon chief among them,
flirting with each other, and me. it is so hot i almost
put it back down, wait for it to cool off, but it smells
so delicious; familiar. i take one more taste, somehow
a sad taste. it tastes just as it's tasted before
only now something else— it tastes now
also of that past tasting. i can taste not only that i have
known this taste before: i can also taste that when.
i relive her look in this taste, the way she watched me
before things were clear, uncloaking myself
with the smell of the cider between us, no space
and uncomfortable stools. i can taste my desire
just to entwine a bit, perhaps our bodies hinting
toward intercourse, to the meaning of our dancing.
it tastes so strongly of that hiddenness she left for me
to move me more slowly into her, to make my own
sharing lush with attention, the weight of the thing,
the thing shared silently between us, the poem;
i taste now her refusal to recite that poem aloud
as she quietly muttered it to herself, knowing a poem
must be spoken. i'm tasting the icy chill of approaching
wintertime through the opened and reopened door,
the taste of a scarf and a cute hat, and especially
above all else, i taste in this familiar taste, her look
shyly out from behind whatever it was there between us
birthing love out of lust, birthing intimacy out of distance,
giving birth out from herself to a kind of me— the way
she looked at me when she let me look at her
and when she let her look mirror my need to see,
the intimation of some me-to-be, that hint, that taste.

yet i also taste a different tasting. her look was absent,
that i may never see her eyes again. waiting, drinking
hot mulled cider that i wished to be drinking with her,
and though i can taste that earlier taste now, and her look
and all that subtle starving presence, never almost,
i can taste, almost came. and now perhaps that never
has arrived. and yet, unfortunately, i can taste it
the never-againness of this taste i taste in this very mug.

James posted an exquisite reply to the photo of the Couple in the 2nd avenue Diner. I think it needs to be linked to on the front page. Click Below:

I was sitting in a restaurant above a square in Reykyavík, thinking about the tasty Icelandic lamb I was about to order, when a beautiful blue-eyed woman and her companion walked in and sat directly in front of me. When sitting at my table I thought for a moment, "This chair, or this one?" And I finally decided to take the chair that faced the window. When they walked in they headed straight to that window. She sat down, then stood up, switched seats; he sat down, and then she stood up again, and switched to the seat on my left. I could see her better there. He turned to me and we smiled with that, "silly girl!" expression on our faces. We weren't thinking in the same language, but our eyes understood each other well enough. She, on the other hand, wouldn't look directly at me...