Sometimes memories come back to a person when they are least expected.  In preparation for one of the skits being prepared for my poetry evening next week, my mind keeps going back to the first time I met Yehuda Amichai, and I couldn’t understand why.  The first time we met we were supposed to read at the Nassau County Museum, and the host took us out for Chinese.  When we got to the fortune cookie, Yehuda opened his and pretended to read, “In an hour you will be hungry again.”

The poem:

THERE IS NOTHING TO EAT
What is missing
is far more present
than what is here
as if there exists somewhere
an ideal fridge
in some ideal kitchen
that contains
all food
for all hunger

That hunger is what binds me to him forever.