Did you have black-eyed peas,
ham hoc, cabbage, mustard greens
or some other lucky food yesterday?
Will you have good luck or wealth?
Why would that work?
It seems black-eyed peas
became good luck
when Yankee soldiers took the food
but left that, considering it unfit.
These lucky foods are homey, humble,
unpretentious. And therein lies the luck,
the alignment with fortune, with creation.
Given a menu when we don’t have to pay
how often do we choose classy,
expensive, urbane? We eat to impress
ourselves because it’s high end,
others, because it’s high end.
But our food and our lives should be honest,
simple, to the point, healthy, appropriate.
We have no need to impress
but have good cause to care for ourselves,
to conserve, to think, to eat smart.
Compulsive overeaters or normies,
what we eat is who we are
and we can choose to be healthy,
to be lucky, to be blessed.