WRITTEN by Valentina amaral
photography by mal tayag and sky lahood

Eating is sacred. It is a form of communion; of becoming one with something even as we break it down. Eating, when done properly, sustains life. Nourishment is a continuous process that exists across bodies, species, and beyond lifespans. Intrinsic to life is its longing to rejoice in and perpetuate itself.

This earth is blessed with life’s seemingly infinite capacity for expression and transformation–cycles within cycles of endings and beginnings. Eating is how we participate in this ecological and evolutionary shape-shifting.

We are alive and we are dying. We eat and are being eaten. Constantly. Eating is as mundane as it is miraculous. Life on this planet is an ongoing feast. If we are attentive, we can partake in all the wonder of its joys and grievances.

The following five poems invite us to inhabit some of these delicious paradoxes; to taste them directly. We are reminded that life is inherently erotic; that everything is interdependent, becoming, and constantly in touch.

The following landscapes of words invite us to recognize ourselves as embodied beings within this blessed feast and to rise to the occasion of its aliveness. Perhaps they remind us that true pleasure grows out of care and lies within the widening of our attention. They locate the miraculous within the mundane, and reveal that transcendence is a matter of flesh.

Eating is a reciprocal dance. We feed life and life feeds us. Sit. Feast on your life.

SONG OF THE TASTE

GARY SNYDER

a.d. 2010

Eating the living germs of grasses

Eating the ova of large birds

the fleshy sweetness packed 

around the sperm of swaying trees

The muscles of the flanks and thighs of 

soft-voiced cows

the bounce in the lamb’s leap

the swish in the ox’s tail

Eating roots grown swoll 

inside the soil 

Drawing on life of living 

clustered points of light spun

out of space

hidden in the grape. 

Eating each other’s seed 

eating 

ah, each other. 

Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:

lip to lip. 

BEANS GREEN AND YELLOW

MARY OLIVER

a.d. 2011

In fall it is mushrooms

gathered from dampness

under the pines:

in spring I have known

the taste of the lamb

full of milk and spring grass;

today it is beans green and yellow

and lettuce and basil from my friends’ garden-

how calmly, as though it were an ordinary thing,

we eat the blessed earth.

SLICING POTATOES

RÃBIA AL-ADAWIYYA AL-QAYSIYYA

a.d. 770

It helps, 

putting my hands on a pot, on a broom, 

in a wash 

pail. 

I 

tried painting, 

but it was easier to fly slicing 

potatoes.

TOMATOES

JOY SULLIVAN

a.d. 2024

I waited so long for love

and suddenly, here it is

standing in the garden, hands full

of heirlooms hot from the sun.

 

Soon we’ll make a supper of them. 

Salted slabs between slices of bread. 

Your beard silvers. My hips ripen. 

The mail piles up. 

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us. 

Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy

being small and hungry and alive. 

LOVE AFTER LOVE

DEREK WALCOTT

a.d. 2022

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.