Body?
Layer cake —
spoiled and fresh
alternating, meat
and sweet leaves,
rumble of bad memory,
whispered promise.

Mind?
Fondue —
swift cooks anything
forked into it, pieces falling in
and soaking through,
good for you only when
moderated.

Soul?
Escargot,
perhaps — glimpsed now and then
in a movie,  known but never
considered seriously; do you even go
to the kinds of places where they are
even acknowledged?

Now, what should we call
whatever this is that is talking
about the others
right now, that looks at them
and imagines their flavors?

Clearly it’s not any of these
to be able, so easily,
to stand aside
from them and see them…

for want of another term, we’ll
call it
manna, or
the Gift.