On Latitude
Cherry blossoms and cuisine
dance differently depending.
With a small flick,
one turns curry
to pozole, coriander
starts to sing. Spring
saunters slowly,
ever-loving, ever-leaving. All
at once it puts its name on
every blasted thing.
Compass rose knows
the glory of this offering.
Along the Great Song and
the Calandra Lark, I ride
the prevailing wind.
I’m in New York this week, visiting a bunch of friends and family. Apparently, we were fortunate - we pulled up right alongside spring! It’s always interesting to me to see how traveling thousands of miles but staying at more or less the same latitude does and doesn’t change the ecology of a place.
I remember hearing something once about cooking through latitude, i.e. ingredients found at a similar latitude tend to be easy to combine for substitutions, flavor profiles, etc. I’m thinking about parts of Central Mexico and India - chilis, tomatoes, coriander, lime/citrus.
“Great song” is a reference to arguably one of the greatest poets of all time, Rainer Maria Rilke. Noted in this perfect poem. I loved the way it connotes movement in the poem - also thought briefly of how so much music moves from the west coast across America and beyond.
The prevailing wind is another name for the jetstream.
Thanks for reading.