From coffee shop to far cafe,
boulangerie to beer garden,
in foreign cities with different ways
than those which I have known,
from bright of day to falling night,
across the wide-set ocean,
on the other side of a mountain,
not knowing the language,
being hard pressed to replicate
the sounds on the menu,
in a place that is strange,
with friends to guide
or with no friends,
on busy main streets
or down side ones,
knowing what should be eaten
and where,
or else trying something
that doesn’t look at all edible,
but always visiting
the place less tried,
beloved of locals,
from cafe to bodega
to the fanciest restaurant in town,
on the journey of all a lifetime,
becoming, through a coffee
or a sit-down meal
or a bite standing
a local of the place visited
instead of a transient visitor,
and finding (through food and drink)
the very soul and essence
of the places frequented,
the shape and force of life
that comes about, first of all,
through what food is eaten,
and where,
and knowing that joining in
the ritual of the taking in
of food and drink,
partaking of a meal
in a new, foreign locale,
you become part of that place,
its soul and essence,
part of its history,
I have traveled the wide
wide world, from a picnic
on an alpine peak, thin of air,
to the gentle spending of an afternoon
in a cafe in Paris,
to a place in the east
whose food was strange to me,
coming to understand the place
a little better – just a little – and
becoming, then, more than just a tourist,
a clear and true denizen
of the world, of the life
lived in it, down to its
most basic essence:
the glorious, god-given sustenance,
the gentle mark of
food.
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