154. The Lamb of Fog

Lamb sausage they say is the sweetest,
larded with fat and coming from
the tender meat of youth. To the tongue
it is as if a taste of springtime but almost
pungent, giving hint to the flavor that would grow
from a sheep, that inhabits mutton like wisdom.

Even now, when we are slipping deep
into orange fall and the maple leaves, each a map
to a certain genesis and a more certain death,
we can sense the taste of spring that will grow
from these wet and rotting orange leaves
gathered like mud at our feet.

Maybe a little fire would help at this moment,
a little flame to cook the sausage, maybe
burn the casing, if only slightly, something
to melt the fat within and cook the meat,
some way to release the flavor into the air,
onto the plate, over our speechless tongues.

A little bit of springtime in the wind today,
a little bit of sunshine, and the start of a few days
of forgetting that it is autumn now and, if not
grey, then always tending towards grey, always
waiting to be a leafless grey at the end of October,
and the world so wet with leaves that their smell
comes stuffed into our noses, a part of ourselves.

Maybe a little lamb sausage for breakfast
with maybe a little mustard, and eggs on the side
with yolks only a little runny, and as orange as
the leaves lying wet and flat on the lawn. Maybe
a little tea with a little sugar and a hot piece
of lamb sausage ready for eating on a cold day.

To bite through the casing and release
that taste of crumbled meat and spices,
and the taste of young lambhood in the spring,
gives me the sense of being alive
and discovering with my tongue the world
for the first and last time. We live for flavor
on tongues, through eyes, in ears, even
the flavor of the touch of a sausage breaking
open in a mouth and spilling its spicy sweetness
into us. Maybe with a little mustard, and hot.

On a cold morning, with the fog obscuring
the earth around us, before the water has boiled,
we wait for some warmth to guide us, for
the flavor of the day. We wait for the lamb of fog,
for that sausage cooked just that morning
and made into a sweet and tasty bundle of heat,
enough warmth to swallow for that sense
that we’d remained under cover of blanket
in what remains of our bed, alone save for
the dreams of being warm and of tasting
that little warm dream of sausage.

Or made out of dreaming, as any human is.