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Coming Home to Eat Revisited

By: Gary Nabhan

Our mouths, our hearts, our bellies and brains
have been ruminating for centuries
over the same few simple questions:

Just what exactly is it that we want to have cross our lips,
to roll off our tongues, down our throats,
to fill our nostrils with hardly described fragrances,
to slide to a brief halt within our bellies,
to mix with our own gastric juices
to be transformed into something new
by the myriad microbes cohabitating in our guts,
to migrate across our stomach linings
to surge into our bloodstreams
and to be carried along with insulin
for one last wild ride before being lodged
in the cells of our very own bodies?

My friends and neighbors, I ask you
what do we want to be made of?
What do we claim as our tastes?
And what on earth do we want to taste like
when we in our own turn are eaten?

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Comments (1)

Katharyn Alfredson

Wow I didn’t know that you write poems too. I’ve been reading your articles and it helped me a lot to appreciate nature more. Thank you for sharing all your great ideas.

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