When I thought I’d become a poet my head was as empty as a young male’s under-developed frontal lobe can be. In hindsight I can see it now. It was hiding in plain sight, the poetry, waiting for me to catch up decades later.
Three Catalan workmen, a slab of membrillo, a crusty loaf of bread, a jug of vino blanco del país. Me, my Spanish fiancée and her parents on excursion to the monastery of Montserrat. The workmen sat near our outdoor cafe table chowing down, savoring a simple merienda in each other’s company. I followed their motions, registered their patter, with no conscious interest. The tableau they embodied was etching itself unawares onto whatever surface I retrieve it from now.
I’m wary of appeals to encoded symbolism, gestures towards nebulous profundities, which stud a certain strain of discourse around poetry. Precise detail speaks louder. The cracked yellow handle of the little knife one man used to cut the guava paste he smeared on his hunk of bread. How he wiped its blade on his trouser leg before passing it to the next man. The ceremonious flourish with which they poured rounds into their drained glasses. Their laughter eliciting a prim cluck from my mother-in-law to be.
Wiry laborers at rest, scarfing their fare hungrily, with zest inhabiting their moment fully as I eyed them sidelong from mine. I was constructing the poetry from it subliminally; didn’t know it at the time, much less how to write it. Still don’t. It’s not that it’s too late now; it’s that it’s always too late. At that very dawning, and perhaps when you find someone to love, is when poetry starts to make sense, if ever.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
I Have a Bone to Pick with the Food Chain
In a neighboring town I glimpsed a lone cow in a chute back of a meat processing plant. She was staring fixedly at something unidentified off to my right, heedless of my passing. Only one outcome was left for her.
A “meat processing plant” is a slaughter house. She was in her last hours. Was she afraid? Did she have any inkling of what came next? What was it that had captured her attention? She was so still, staring. What kind of conscience lights the bovine brain? Can anyone know? When had she last been given any food or water? It didn’t matter, did it. She was worth no further investment by anyone. She was meat now, just not dead yet.
In this nation under God, condemned humans can choose whether to be shot, poisoned or electrocuted. How do we kill what we butcher?
There’s been very little beef in my present. There’s none in my future. Adios, Whataburger. I can’t get her out of my head. This jolly season bearing down on us like a toy train driven by Goofy: I”m thinking of celebrating it with some fasting and meditation. Bean soup. Piece of fruit.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved