I’ve never met a cheese I didn’t like.
From soft to aged Gouda, I’ve indulged.
I grab a bite for work or from the bike,
its basket filled with goodies till it bulged,
when I was navigating Amsterdam,
the city where I lived and met a friend,
who brought us cheese and said, my friend, I am
your senior, and my life will someday end,
but you who’ve only reached a middle age
deserve a Gouda softening but firm,
a middle Gouda, not the hardest stage,
not over-pungent towards its final term.
I haven’t seen the friend since moving west
back to my country’s shores where I grab brie
to pass a busy lunch when I know best
is to get out and be a little free.
I sometimes miss the Dutch and mostly friends
who sheltered my hard feelings of despair
at losing love and turning with the bends
within my trails, sunk down to black with care.
When even cheese was not a solace, they
lit up my day and helped me find the way.
But back to cheese, I sample and devour
at parties or my desk, at any hour,
I came to love again and found a cheese
of late brought over from the Netherlands
that was as old as we in love and ease
within our home, content, without demands.
My life is punctuated with the breaks
for cheese and all the connotations learned
from overseas and now—for new friends’ sakes
I can find joy at how my life has turned.
So let’s not look away from cheddar shaved
within an omelet breakfast, chili bowl,
or how a provolone with ham behaved
in making lunch for my new love, now whole.
I guess it’s my biography again,
What writer leaves that way to move the pen?
Unselfish and tight bonded with my peers,
my love who knows me fully and endears
me to him daily, surely, while my cheese
defines my work persona, though they tease,
and I write now a chapter of a book
that I’m enjoying greatly, and I look
back on the Gouda days and biking home
and think, I’ve come a long ways when I roam.
“A rat in a strange warehouse” was a phrase
another person told me in those days,
a turn of phrase the Dutchman understood.
I’m back. I’m changed. I’m staying here for good.
[This is a Featured Poem from our Spring 2024 Poetry Contest.]