Max Reif’s most recent poem to appear here was “To A River, From the Window of Flight 1914” (February 2017)

To My Breakfast: An Ode to the Sense of Taste
By Max Reif

This morning it’s egg whites,
corn meal and salt,
cooked up in the microwave.

We who are prone
to obesity often
disparage the act of eating,

but I tell you:
the taste of corn
is immortal!

It deserves a place
next to Mozart
and Shakespeare.

Can we speak
the word “universal”
and not mention it?

Or coffee:
there is a place for it, too,
surely, in the palace
of platonic forms.

I could go on:
chocolate
cardamom
spaghetti.

A literature professor
once told our class,
“Huysmans, the novelist,
tried to create
an actual *symphony*
of taste, but it was
judged unsuccessful.”

Yet the notes,
the elements
are there.

We who are prone
to obesity have only
one tiny flaw

When memory
does not suffice
to recall a taste,

we invoke
the culinary translation
of music’s “encore”

and shout,
“More!”