In My Salad Days



Salad Days

Wikipedia:
Modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a person's heyday when somebody was at the peak of his/her abilities, not necessarily in that person's youth.
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The Salad

Hints of tints of golden
pear skins,
combine with
ruby'd cranberries
each a face, the cheeks of alcoholic old men,
each wrinkle,
a life's recording.

All are mates for the
marcona almonds
nestling, playing hide n' go seeking
tween silk sheeted leaves of
butter lettuce.

All dressed to the nines,
underneath a top hatted, cravatted, Fred Astaire
marinade.

Coated, bathed, loved,
protected by a vinegar of balsams,
aged grape must, pressed,
a lovely, desirable color,
a brown and bronzed rust,
pressed, then left,
to easy rest for
oh so many years,
like I do, easy resting,
when  you feed me in
My Salad Days.

The Days

Though it was a life,  decades destructed
Millenniums of de minimus,
Forty plus Seders of exile, of hell,
Marked by promises, whispers, horseradish tears of
Next Year and Jerusalem,
Time steeped in a tradition of patient waiting.

Each year, recorded by a spot of red wine
Purposely Spilled,
By my father on unbleached Passover tablecloth,
To example, to symbolize that
Messiness in life,
Is O.K.

The Salad Days

Salad served with irony generous,
When beard greyed and scraggly,
White speckled, wisps of sea salt,
All my youthful greenery, long wilted.

Yet the words herein writ are my
Afikomen, my just dessert,
My victory song of Hallelujah
Just before we eat, celebrating
My Feast of Ascension, marking a
Delayed Arrival, yet right-on time of
My Salad Days.

It was only when
I was resurrected as two bodies,
A pair of cuffed links coupled,
In My Salad Days,
With the taste of freedom,
A first-born infant survivor,
Was I rebirthed, and to the fore, risen.
When words fell from smiling lips, and
Rain and tears flew upwards, and
Each and every breath was an
Amen.