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Ode to NoodlesDavid Thornbrugh
Noodles alone won’t save us
but their variety
and practicality inspire
hope.
Flat lasagna noodles
like planks for rafts
shipwreck victims clutch
when they come up gasping,
long brittle spaghetti noodles
like the bundled sticks
the Romans called fascia
and bundled together symbolically
to show strength in numbers.
One noodle is a nuisance,
dried wheat straw stuck
to stucco ceiling over the stove
where it was thrown
to test readiness,
but a bundle is a tribe
friendly to strangers
staggering through the jungle,
white ramen noodles like
Buddhist bow ties swimming
out of meat broth to melt
the snow blowing out of Siberia
and falling on Hokkaido,
soba noodles served cold
as a bed for giant prawns,
the birthday cake of oxymorons,
noodles slapped flat on marble
counter tops by samurai
hands until the sheets
separate into individual arrows
like those sticking out of
Toshiro Mifune in the last scene
of Throne of Blood,
noodles squeezed
between chrome rollers
and sliced by multiple
blades by elegant uptown
fingers, crescent moon
noodles, rolled cigarette
paper noodles, scallop
shell noodles, noodles
from every culture that
cooks for every mouth
that eats. Noodles are necessary
like the words for poems
we swallow to keep from starving.
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