lenten journal: spice route

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