the lion of contentment / has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest

I am failing big-time at posting on Mondays. I was in Florida with the parentals for about a week and managed to avoid the internet most of the time and it was actually... really nice. I'll cut straight to the details: Juno beach littered with man o' war jellyfish; lots of Scrabble with Mom in the evenings; subs from a real, honest-to-god, New York-style Italian deli that would make Tony Soprano proud; and several amazing dinners involving too much of only the good things--brie, bread, shrimp, steak, and, my favorite, tangy sweet key lime pie.
Maybe it's the Italian in me, or maybe it's just everyone, but food is so important to my happiness. In the last two days, Mom made chicken soup with tortellini, Alex and I had our ceremonial Noodles & Co. lunch, and the three former ESL-teachers-in-Asia went out for a rousing round of "cold, exhilarating wine." In this case, savory and delectable pinot noir from Vinotecca. Yum yum.
Today, Mom and I ventured into my favorite place on earth--Le Petit Prince at 14 and Pierce. It has been there for over 28 years and smells like a petit French heaven. We bought too many chocolat et amande tuiles, palmiers, gougere, and tasty, buttery noisette cookies, and if that weren't enough... Alex, Emily and I are off, once again, to toast our love for Asia with pho and nom bo kho (spicy papaya salad) at Da Nang in Clawson, followed by some brews at Black Lotus.
All I can think of right now is Jenny Howard always laughing at me for making such a ruckus when we went out to eat in Beijing with GIEU. I had to try everything, exclaim "it's so tasty!" (I now know how to say that in Chinese--hen hao chi) and then insist that everyone try a bite of the strange foods before us. So with chopsticks and palmiers in hand, "the lion of contentment" has certainly placed his heavy paw on my chest--and on my stomach.
Enjoy Billy Collins. His words are a feast of tasty, verbal treats. I can't help but crave bone marrow as I read this, and think of the gan guo (dry pot) restaurant in Qingdao where I first fell in love with "the leg of an angel..."

Osso Bucco
--Billy Collins
I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.