Poets' Practice Pad

Kasseri

          (For Marko)

"Would you care for a piece of Kasseri?"
Marko looked up at me,
his joy leaping from the screeching fork
to the center of the plate.
With the smile from thin lips,
his words sputtered out
through false teeth
"Oh, wouldn't I!"
He loved that cheese,
but was impossible to find.

Then he took a bite.
"This is the kind.
Where did you get it from?"

And with voice so tender,
he blurted out youthful secrets that,
when they navigated the Aegean,
hiding their salt of tears,
his father never ate another kind of cheese.

I set the plate
in front of him, my guest,
the old Greek seaman
afloat in a different world,
no more to be a boy again.

Yesterday, I took out the Kasseri,
but I had to put it back
under the arbitrary rule
of tears that didn't let me take a bite,
for the crumbs of memory
of a sailor with a gentle soul
who, a week ago,
sailed, yielding
to the tight bond of the earth.

(True story, by the way.)

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