Destinations by Bruce Meyer

Think of ways to explain
where we are now on a highway

at midnight north of Toronto
as we run at a curtain of snow

and standards on the medium
are king palms ripe with light

and lamps on the sideroads
are thin nuns bent at vespers

as the stacks of dark factories
are men smoking in doorways

and imaginary bridges float
above us to connect those places

that have not yet been imagined;
yet this is the way we find our way

and everything is as real as love
and as determined to advance

because what is true is true
no matter how it might be said.

Food

The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury

“A big pot of coffee for me,” panted Simmons, smiling. “And a pan of cinnamon buns, by God . . . Simmons yanked the door wide. “Hey!” he yelled. “Bring on the coffee and the buns!”

“He stood for a few moments, looking about. Behind him the rain whirled at the door. Ahead of him on a low table, stood a silver pot of hot chocolate, steaming, and a cup, full, with a marshmallow in it. And beside that, on another tray, stood thick sandwiches of rich chicken meat and fresh cut tomatoes and green onions.”

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

“The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmond and never tasted anything more delicious.”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dhal

“Mr. Willy Wonka can make marshmallows that taste of violets, and rich caramels that change colour every ten seconds as you suck them, and little feathery sweets that melt away deliciously the moment you put them between your lips. He can make chewing-gum that never loses its taste, and sugar balloons that you can blow up to enormous sizes before you pop them with a pin and gobble them up. And, by a most secret method, he can make lovely blue birds’ eggs with black spots on them, and when you put one of these in your mouth, it gradually gets smaller and smaller until suddenly there is nothing left except a tiny little dark red sugary baby bird sitting on the tip of your tongue.”

The Brotherhood of the Grape - John Fante

“The kitchen. La cucina, the true mother country, this warm cave of the good witch deep in the desolate land of loneliness, with pots of sweet potions bubbling over the fire, a cavern of magic herbs, rosemary and thyme and sage and oregano, balm of lotus that brought sanity to lunatics, peace to troubled, joy to the joyless . . . the altar a kitchen range . . . the old children, lured back to their beginnings, the taste of mother’s milk still haunting their memories . . . the wicked world receding as the old mother witch sheltered her brood from the wolves outside. Beguiled and voracious Virgil filled his cheeks with gnocchi and eggplant and veal, and flooded them down his gullet with the fabulous grape of Joe Musso, spellbound, captivated, mooning over his great mother.”

Ulysses - James Joyce

“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”