In Search Of Coming Myth Poem by James Niles

T’was a small eatery, walls nautically enriched
with charts, a polished brass bell, at the kitchen port,
so bright., burnished to a gloss gong gleaming, glittering
with a mist of virgin olive oil and the
gleaning of the pasta, vermicelli with Marco
Polo’s strands of buttery filaments and a
cascade of Parmesan cheese, grated
and gritty with a fecund smell of hidden desire

Bathed in garlic butter a large bread bowl
of butter garlic with the reflection of beauty-myself absorbed-
dissolved my arms sink deep into
the walls of fading Madonnas of every
virginal virgin from Northern Italy, red chalk on
a rusty paneling, lemon-oil burnished and the old
woman, hook nosed, tossing dough and spinning it
in gamin Gorgonzola twists, as her large breasts swayed
loosely under the kumquat colored cotton my own reflection
swirling to where the center held not but neither did it gyre nor
gimble in the wake of the geological flat charts of edge
cut destinations to flower fields strawberry strewn
and nettle nicked the Cremonese red varnished floors
carved spruce of indeterminate growth rings knotted
wide and narrow and sneezed away – echoing hello- hello -
soups on – soups on sales urned-urned out in the woods today, today
wherefore–wherefore–my love–my love–today–today–
Until echo shall have a face-a face-a face face face