for Anthony Bourdain
I was so sad and tired and lonely once,
at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City,
I wanted to cry. Everything was made of stone.
A serpent. A warrior. At the end of one dark corridor
there was a great circle of stone, with all the seasons
and the centuries, the sun in the center, sticking out its tongue.
I didn’t know what to do. But then we came
to the museum cafeteria, and the food was steaming
beneath the warming lights, just like at Woolworth’s
when I was a kid, and there was Swiss steak and spaghetti
and mashed potatoes, and the air smelled of garlic
and the air smelled of coffee, and we sat and we ate, and ate,
laughing and talking, even happier than we’d been
at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe when Mary came
and gave us all roses. At least I was. I was joyous.
Tony, I think I may know what you were hungering for.