James Richardson

Essay with a Grain of Salt
March 20, 2020 Richardson James

Essay with a Grain of Salt

 

Salt on black silk
are the stars,
and legendarily

 

slick crystals
line the red-dark
halls of the underworld,

 

and when the spreader grinds by
in a white-out, you breathe it
down on your tongue

 

invisibly, and even dissolved
darkly in dark waves
it will burn a wound.

 

**

 

Deer and other
eaters of leaves
are drawn to salt licks,
whereas carnivores (blood is enough)
don’t seek it. As for us,

 

our bodies hold a good
half-pound of salt,
though we are mostly
tasteless to ourselves —

 

unless, say, you bite your lip,
or in some teary, moonlit theater
of balked passion
(alas, I’ve done this) kiss
your own damp wrist.

 

**

 

John Evelyn oddly
called newfangled
New World sugar
Indian salt — and yet

 

taste test
a single white
crystal of either on the tip

 

of your finger. That first
tiny instant —
sting or sweet?

 

**

 

No ant, no rot
dares its white plain.
Microbes that touch

 

its sheer thirst:
dust. Everyone
knows by now the salary

 

we sweat for is, at root,
salt money,
but even joy’s grape

 

contains a trace, never mind
the wine-dark sea, and surely
you can taste on a warm

 

brow or lip
the work or fever
or whatever whatever

 

we want from each other.

 

**

 

Seeing my yearning,
grandma would say

 

Do you know
how to catch a bird?
(her riddle
older than Evelyn) —

 

Put salt on its tail.

 

**

 

Salt on black silk
are the stars.
There are,
let us not forget,
white fires.

 

James Richardson (www.aboutjamesrichardson.com) is most recently the author of For Now (Copper Canyon, 2020).  His other collections of poems, aphorisms and ten-second essays include During (winner of the Alice Fay Castagnola Prize of the Poetry Society of America), By the Numbers (a National Book Award finalist), Interglacial (a National Book Critics Circle award finalist) and Vectors.