TASTE DISCOVERED

       (after Heaney’s Glanmore Sonnets)

A first bite is a promise, seemed enough
though hurried on a tongue that swallows it
to gobble more, to pass it to a gut
that doesn’t know enough but only lack
What lingers on the tongue is slow to wake
not linked to hunger, free of its demands
Another us awaits with open hands
with more to give and needing ever less
Not the esthete that tells the precise tree
a wine’s grapes grew on, or Kant’s foreshadowing
of our receipt of beauty by a nameless sense
just this allowance of what comes un-guessed
A gathering of taste we never earned
but fell into ready bonded, newborn.

Don Brandeis lives quietly outside Seattle reading and writing poems when they show up.  He has a degree in philosophy and a long fascination with Zen.  Some of his poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Black Moon Magazine, Blue Unicorn, Last Leaves and elsewhere.  A book of his poems is available, called Paper Birds (Unsolicited Press 2021).  We live in hard times.  We endure as art.  (If you need a photo, email me if you want to publish one of these.)