lenten journal: spice route

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    Last night as we were getting ready for the Cocoa Cinnamon tasting, Leon had a plastic bottle filled with sand from the Sahara he had brought home from time spent in Tunisia and Morocco. He poured some into a brass Turkish coffee pot and let us touch it. The sand was somehow fine and coarse at the same time and had a pinker hue than what I know as sand, bordering on rose. (Cue the Police: “Tea in the Sahara.”) At the same time, Areli was building little mounds of spices – cinnamon, cayenne, sea salt, hibiscus, curry, cacao nibs, raw cacao beans – for us to add to our Venezuelan drinking chocolate when they served it later in the evening. I sat the camera on the table at one end of board and took this picture. Here is where the picture took me.

    spice route

    something in the sand
    shrinks me down to size
    clothed in appropriate
    insignificance I step into
    the stories mounded up
    in the spices on the board
    in the middle of our table

    standing in my dining room
    I walk the stone streets
    of Tunis and Marrakesh
    surrounded by the laughter
    and questions from the
    caravan of friends and
    adventurers sailing

    around the room
    tasting and talking
    digesting dreams
    inhaling hope
    infusing our lives with
    the trace minerals
    of togetherness

    Peace,
    Milton

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