Eating With Fingers, by Kwame Dawes

I love this Kwame Dawes poem, Eating With Fingers, and I hope you will enjoy it too.

Eating With Fingers

  I've returned to South Carolina
where summer is barefaced and plain-
  speaking, no dalliance here in Dixie.
For three days, I am comforted
  by the lingering spice of your daal
in my fingers, and somehow
  while it lasts, it is enough.
Still I am sure I will return
  without warning to Marlowe's dark
Thames, that ancient stream
  on whose southern banks New World
Kurtzes rave among the natives.
  I will come incognito, travelling light,
and seek out the shelter
  of your sun-washed loft, there
to make poems and scoop
  handsful of basmati
souped in your garlic-flecked sauces.

From Kwame Dawes' collection, Midland. Ohio University Press. Copyright 2001 Kwame Dawes.
Used with author's permission.