Flavor

Flavor,
the spirit of the tongue
dancing with the ghost of
what’s being consumed,
is a fickle romance;
days on end I long for the company
of vanilla, salt, and pepper,
and then banish them in favor of
adobo, cocoa, curries, hablanos.

Flavor,
inside me as much as
entering from outside
occasionally demands as much travel
as it can stand,
but it always falls back
on good bread
and rich cheese
and the stately, almost stationary taste
of cold water.
It demands, in the end,
to come home
to the universal
that is found everywhere.