I wish her a lucky passage

Ten years ago, I started a project—a design project, a “book,” neatly foreshadowing my career as yearbook editor—intended as a graduation present for several friends in the 8th grade. Words, pictures, quotations, arranged and selected by me, it was designed to bring a tear or a smile to my friends’ faces; to try to tell them, even then, just how much they meant to me. I suppose I was beyond my years and full of affect for a 13-year-old...

And I didn’t finish the project. I forgot about it entirely, and I’m finding the remnants of it now, in a manila envelope on a dusty bookshelf.

It’s funny to find here, day after day, how little has changed. I still love books and wise quotations and designing things and starting projects and I still can’t ever tell my friends to my satisfaction just how much I care about them. And I still don’t finish things. I won’t dwell on it now, but the list is very long. My shelves are full of books with markers permanently wedged at page 67 or 123. For every book I finish, I start two ill-fated ones. But, I've earnestly been trying to curb all that lately. In the last year, I’ve finished nearly every book I’ve started, and I’m trying to read only one or two at once.

Maybe this massive room-cleaning project is just the task I needed. I’ve been reverting back to my old-self—pre-China, pre-London, pre-college, maybe even pre-high school—when I was supremely content to retreat to my space, surrounded by my books and small objects. I am learning how to be an introvert again. But, this time around, I’m also trying to slowly reduce the weight of the house.

I imagine picking up our house by the ears and dropping it onto an old brass scale to see how much it weighs. How many tons do my books and shoes and ceramics and grand piano contribute? What about mom’s books and magazines and pictures and seashells? And how much is dad’s share—his piles of “useful” pack-rat objects that fill all the hidden spaces and spill out into the common areas? I’m trying to reduce my share because that’s the only part I can change; the only piece I have any control over; the only area where I have any say. (It’s figurative, really.)

So I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through my old treasures lately. Uncovering them and running my fingers over their dusty, glassy surfaces brings on waves of honey-soaked nostalgia. And strangely… forgetfulness.

I discovered a small, porcelain jewelry box with two doves on top that was filled with small objects: a black plastic spider ring, a piece of green foam, and a sticker that had lost its stick. I must have once placed them there, in a fragile, white box, because they meant something to me; because they conjured a memory. But staring at them now, I couldn’t recall what they stood for or why it had been so necessary to safely and secretly guard them.

With a few moments' consideration, I slid the tiny pieces into a shiny, black garbage bag. After consulting with mom about its origins, the porcelain dove box made its way into a pile destined for the Groves garage sale. (Note the passive voice.)

These knick-knacks—the music boxes, the wind chimes, the decorative dried chilies from Santa Fe, the blown glass whale, the friendship bracelets I wove with my 11-year-old hands, even the plastic spider ring—were once my treasures. They meant something to another version of me; to a person I no longer am but still find traces of in unfinished projects and in the little things that cover my shelves and keep me company.

Which will be the firsts to go when I next return here to purge my life, to lessen the literal and figurative weight that fills my secret spaces? Will it be the glittery star boxes that my cousins, Tess and Daniel, painted for me when they were younger? Will it be the tiny, stuffed, yellow bear that my student, Phil, gave me in Qingdao—one of the few teachers’ presents I was able to bring back across the ocean with me? Will I have forgotten his name by then, and all the others’?

Or, more likely, it will be the large seashells on my top shelf, which I removed from Mr. Ed’s mom’s house after she died—my first brush with cleaning out an old woman’s house and one of my only brushes with the hollow spaces that come in death’s wake. By the time I decide her echoing conch shell is doing me no good, we will probably have gone through both of my grandmothers’ houses, filling our rooms to the brim once again with the leftovers of their lives, with the treasures that mean everything to them and nothing to us.

In The Hurt Locker, the protagonist marvels at his son’s fascination with a jack-in-the-box; how that spunky toy—or any object, really—is enough to keep his young son captivated and content. “By the time you get to my age,” he says, “maybe it’s only one or two things” you really love.

So I’ve begun trading in my well-loved possessions—some stuffed animals, dolls, and games have been relegated to closet shelves; some are slated for the garage sale or Salvation Army; some are in the trash. My books remain—too precious to part with—but my real prizes now are shiny and foreign compared to my old favorites: the jewelry I acquired over four years of working for Barbara; my assortment of pictures of old and faraway friends; the pile of bracelets from Beijing and Qingdao, especially the celadon jade bangle Tracy gave me on my last day, even though it now lies shattered into two heartbreaking pieces. And finally, my maroon backpack gathering dust in the corner—the turtle-shell home that has served me so well in every corner of the world.

There was a time when this blue-carpeted room was my world—filled with my stuffed companions and curio comforts. But now, having a light load is what matters; having less cargo. So, one day, my turtle shell and I can once again slip off the face of the earth, in search of everything we can’t find within these walls.

This poem by Richard Wilbur is one of my absolute favorites. Its imagery and meaning struck me so much the first time I read it that I actually burst into tears.

For me, it conjures up a vision of the yellow Victorian farm house on Williamston Road on the way to my aunt’s house, a building that, since I was a kid, I have wanted to explore and inhabit. I imagine being The Writer of this poem, shut in the atelier of that yellow house, writing away, while my dad observes from distant creaky floorboards.

But it couldn’t be my dad, in actuality, because he doesn’t possess the deft touch of subtlety that this poem’s speaker enjoys. Rather, I wish it were him. Or in lieu of that option, I imagine myself with the speaker’s voice. I am not a father wishing “a lucky passage” to his daughter, but to a smaller version of myself—to a person who once coveted and honored and treasured small things, and who filled sheets and sheets of paper with thoughts and stories, just as the bigger version does now.

Grab the tissues. This one is startlingly beautiful.

The Writer

--Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.

with strong voices, passions, pageants

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once but leave before it makes you soft. --Baz Luhrman.

Over the last three years, I have acquired many big-city homes—London, Beijing, Qingdao, and DC—with DC being the smallest at half a million and Beijing the largest at 14 million. Even the streets of Manhattan felt a bit like home when I visited in August and was comforted by the sight of a bagel shop, a sushi restaurant, a BBQ joint, and a Korean grocery store all on the same block across from my grandma’s apartment—a kind of homecoming after 6 months in more-homogenous China. New York is my dad’s rejected homeland, after all; “I’m Midwestern by choice,” he says. It is a place I come back to, again and again, and I feel wrong if I don’t visit once a year, maybe to remind myself that it’s still there. But my dearest home--not a city, at all--remains little Ann Arbor, with her wide streets and green trees arching overhead, with bookstores and bars and a world of restaurants... Home is the place you go away from and come back to.

Last March when I was living in Qingdao, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, an intensely beautiful, epic story, full of weighty words that paint a vibrant picture of life in Latin America. While sitting in my 14th floor apartment overlooking Fuzhou Beilu and barges on the distant horizon, I found something comic and strangely wonderful about reading Marquez—surrounded not by parrots and palm fronds and Spanish, but by gingko trees and cherry blossoms, emerging infrastructure and mounds of rubble, the weight of sharp Chinese tones and of filmy pollution being blown away by the hazy mist off the sea.

Now, on the other side of the world, I find myself amongst a mildly similar contrast—reading Charlie Baxter’s Saul & Patsy and Fuchsia Dunlop’s chili-soaked memoir, Shark Fin & Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet & Sour Memoir of Eating in China. These two books, as profoundly different as they are, bring out a sense of “home” for me like neither could on its own.

Dr. Baxter was my mom’s professor at Wayne State before he began his career at U of M and is the Garrison Keillor of Michigan, arguably our poet-laureate (even though he recently retreated to Minneapolis). He writes about Michigan’s landscape, people, and nuances with dexterity, thoughtfulness, understanding, and a sincere reverence for the beautiful peculiarities that make this place inimitable.

At the same time, I’ve been reliving the three lazy, haze-filled days I spent in Chengdu last July, while I read Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan food memoir. My former professor, Kevin Miller, lived in China for several years and recommended Dunlop’s books to me last fall. I think he understood, in his quiet, awkward way, that I was urgently, frantically, trying to hold onto something—onto anything I could from my time in China, even if I’m not planning on enrolling in cooking school in Chengdu like Dunlop did (in 1994, when there were even fewer laowai (foreigners) in China and there were certainly no laowai women at a Sichuan culinary academy.)

Reading Dunlop’s book in my carpeted bedroom here in Michigan, in Meiguo, makes my head rush with memories of faces and sounds and tastes of Chinese chaos. I can only read a few pages at a time before I am overwhelmed with a strange homesickness.

A similar power of contrast holds true for this poem by Walt Whitman. It is the differences between the language, the imagery, and the pacing of the first half and the second that brings out the beauty of each. And it is a beauty I have been toying with a great deal lately. Part of me is forever fascinated by the intensity of cities like Beijing, Hong Kong, and New York—with their passions and pageants—while the other, quieter part of me daydreams about owning a vineyard in Napa, about running off to Spain or New Zealand, where I will ride a motorbike and stare at fluffy sheep-clouds and harvest grapes all day long in the splendid, silent sun.

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun

--Walt Whitman

1

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling,

Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard,
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass grows,
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape,

Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching

content,

Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the

Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can

walk undisturb'd,

Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd woman of whom I should never tire,

Give me a perfect child, give me away aside from the noise of the

world a rural domestic life,

Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse by myself, for my own ears

only,

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal

sanities!

These demanding to have them, (tired with ceaseless excitement, and

rack'd by the war-strife,)

These to procure incessantly asking, rising in cries from my heart,

While yet incessantly asking still I adhere to my city,

Day upon day and year upon year O city, walking your streets,

Where you hold me enchain'd a certain time refusing to give me up,

Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of soul, you give me forever

faces;

(O I see what I sought to escape, confronting, reversing my cries,

see my own soul trampling down what it ask'd for.)

2
Keep your splendid silent sun,
Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods,
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards,
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets--give me these phantoms incessant and
endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes--give me women--give me comrades and
lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day--let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows--give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching--give me the sound of
the trumpets and drums!
(The soldiers in companies or regiments--some starting away, flush'd
and reckless,
Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd ranks, young, yet very
old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)
Give me the shores and wharves heavy-fringed with black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life, full to repletion and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the
torchlight procession!
The dense brigade bound for the war, with high piled military wagons
following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants,
Manhattan streets with their powerful throbs, with beating drums as now,
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even
the sight of the wounded,)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus!
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.

All mimsy were the borogoves

The flurry of Alice-related articles that surrounded the release of Tim Burton’s latest film was probably the best thing that happened to me in early March and, of course, inspired me to post this zany, mythical poem.

I have a long-standing attachment to the Alice books—they are like old friends, entangled with mom and math and my time in England. When I studied in London, I visited Oxford and saw the tree under which Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell girls often sat, and the river where they went boating; at The British Library in London, I stumbled upon Carroll’s original Alice manuscripts and was enchanted by his scritchy notes in the margins, trying out different titles for his book; and the following Christmas, Mom gave me her ancient copy of the definitive Alice-work, The Annotated Alice, with notations by acclaimed mathematician and puzzle-maker, Martin Gardner.

When speaking of gyring and gambling in the wabe, I should also probably mention the first day of my advanced geometry class at Michigan, when my professor put this poem on a PowerPoint to demonstrate sets, and how promising that class seemed then during my rocky mathematics career. Thinking about all of it now still makes me a little sad. But even after abandoning math and teaching, and after seeing Burton’s ill-fitted Alice sequel with the Gholz brothers, I still have a soft pocket for Carroll’s works—and for anything that merges the lines of art and language and math. (See M.C. Escher and my favorite read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, narrated by a lovable British boy who happens to have autism and who labels his chapters with prime numbers.)

The week Burton’s new movie came out also coincided with a wonderful, wacky reunion between me, Alex, and Sasha, who neither Alex nor I had seen for 10 years since we graduated from Covington and all went to separate high schools. Alex started playing Facebook-tag with Sasha back in December so, when she came home from Peru because her sister was having a baby, we all finally caught up in person. The last time I saw her she was a thirteen-year-old and now…she’s an aunt!

Somewhere during the course of the evening, Sasha turned to Alex and I and said: it’s funny how, even after 10 years, we all somehow ended up on the same page—she in Peru with the PeaceCorps, Alex recently returned from a year in Taiwan, me with my stints in China. And when a group of people—I kid you not—came into The Black Lotus dressed as The Queen of Hearts, The Mad Hatter, The Rabbit, and Alice, all three of us were whipped into equal flurries of excitement. The nonsense of our day-to-day lives…there is no language for it. But sometimes, people just get you.

So here is Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky—full invented, blended, portmanteau words—and some excellent photos of me, Sasha, and Alex at my Bat Mitzvah in 1999. Because where would we all be today without a little absurdity, a few awkward slow dances, and the words chortle, burble, and galumphing?

"When I use a word,” says Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

The Jabberwocky

--Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Little Me and Little Sasha

Little Alex

All three of us are in this one!

and each will smile at the other's welcome

The last in a series of love-themed poems, here is Derek Walcott’s Love After Love. The poems this month progressed in an order unlike the phases of a relationship—first the nurturing, satisfying (or dissatisfying?) love of Billy Collins’ Osso Bucco; then the classic, overwhelming I carry your heart by e. e. cummings; followed by the flirty sentiments and deep-felt loss of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why. Finally, and perhaps my favorite of them all, is this poem about the loss of one love and the rediscovery of another—the love we come back to again and again: the love for ourselves.

Right now, I interpret this poem indirectly. (Isn’t that the beauty of poetry? A single poem can speak to us in so many different ways, at many different times in our lives.) I haven’t gone through a tumultuous breakup—though maybe a few losses—but here I am, greeting myself at my own door, in my own mirror, and I am beginning to smile at the welcome.

I am once again surrounded by things that feed me, things I had forgotten about thanks to time and distance—walls covered with familiar paintings; shelves of well-loved books; ceramic vases and pitchers and lopsided animals that I shaped with my own hands; the seashells mom and I painstakingly gathered on dozens of walks down Juno beach; and photographs of me at every age, carefully selected to fill the house when my scampering footsteps are far away.

Yesterday, Mom and I spent the entire evening and well into the night on our quiet pursuits. The snow was coming down silently on our woodsy, white backyard, while the back room was filled with churning creativity and my constantly streaming Ann Arbor radio. I sat at the long table, with art and books and photographs and the chess set I bought in China for company, and sketched for hours—jars, vases, tea sets, bowls, bottles, and sake sets that I will hopefully be able to make soon. My hands are itching to get back in some clay… Mom set up a batik silk-painting lab of sorts all around the room—with sponge brushes, containers of wax, huge sheets of paper, a wood painting frame, finished scarves draped over chairs—and I watched her, all night, exhibit the kind of quiet delight she once directed towards gardening and which I haven’t seen in a long time.

I could say a few things about our talk at lunch—about Bill Joy and the Michigan computing center, about law school, about that internet democracy firm in DC—or I could say how strange it is to be so quiet all the time. I could talk about the haphazard objects around the house and how I’m trying to do my part by getting rid of some of them, or how hearing Tchaikovsky on the radio made my legs crave dancing again. But I’m trying out this quiet thing. I’m doing something that’s hard for me, like everyone keeps telling me to, and it’s slowly becoming easier when I can pass the still, snowy evenings watching Star Wars with Alex or absorbed in art with mom.

There’s a reason this poem is quietly and simply one of the best mantras on love. And it’s the last line, my favorite in all of poetry. I assembled an anthology for a poetry class in college and I titled the entire thing after that one line—one thread to quietly pull everything together, one phrase that I am still trying to heed.

Love After Love

--Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I only know that summer sang in me

I have spent the last two weeks reconnecting with Emily, and it has been really nice--discussing our similar love for exotic, delicious foods; laughing about our escapades in Southeast Asia; comparing what we learned in China and Vietnam now that we've had some time to digest; and spontaneously donning a whole lot o’ spandex for The BANG, like only we would. Above all else, it was really nice to celebrate Chinese New Year/Vietnamese Tet with the same person I celebrated it with last year, even if there is snow on the ground this time around.

I would like to dedicate this week's poem to me & Em, because I like its earnest spunk and I know she will too. I'm continuing with my February trend of love-themed posts--had you noticed?--but with a slight change of pace. In honor of silly St. Valentine, here is a coquettish little sonnet from saintly Edna Millay. The poem's humor comes from the juxtaposition between its traditional structure, natural imagery, and its subject matter, which takes on a decidedly modern twist. It's a nice break from bold declarations of love, insipid cupid, and last weekend's chalky candy hearts, isn't it?

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why (Sonnet XLIII)

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

In this country, in this world, there are a lot of lonely, unfulfilled people. We breed fear in the American suburbs and isolate ourselves from our neighbors--both next-door and across international boundaries--and in our cities, we don’t know the faces on either side of our apartments’ walls.

Now that winter has settled-in and the remains of the hollow, frenetic holiday season have long dissipated, all we’re left with is a cold, hard, loneliness. And as a possible antidote we have... Valentine’s Day.

Like the holiday season, it, too, has largely lost its meaning and luster.

When I look towards lovey-dovey day this year, I have a new association: a dark, unfamiliar city; a clanky, janky bus; a language I can (still) neither speak nor read; and a steamy huo guo restaurant where I shared hot pot with Stella, Tracy, Yolanda, and Kelly on my first full day in Qingdao. Everything was foreign then, but the warmth offered to me by that food and those faces over the following months is enough to keep me full on nights that now seem even darker.

So for all of you who are feeling cold--inside and out--I wish I could take you for hot pot. It does wonders. But instead, some written love from e. e. cummings will have to do.

When I read this poem, I think I interpret it differently than the author intended. Because when I think about "love," I don’t think about one time or one place or one person. I imagine every face--however unlikely, however far away--that I can’t go a day without thinking about, even now. I carry all of you(in my heart).

i carry your heart with me

--e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

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.