Hungering for ecstasy?
Still got that urge
to merge
with the infinite sea?
Good. Stay hungry.
That hunger is holy:
it is the table being set in you,
slowly.
Ask the first person smiling.
Wisdom rests on a contented face.
Listen, and let it take its time.
Truth has no need to race.
Ask the girl twirling through the air,
in love with the wind in her hair.
She laughs at lies, she’s unafraid of crying,
too free to judge, too light to care.
Ask the boy dancing free,
spinning in space, relatively.
Time never touches his soul.
He knows sight is just one sense to see.
Ask the old woman.
She might know.
She has lived her life whole
and is still willing to grow.
How to feel good? she says.
I’ll tell you how:
Live this fine fine moment
right here in the now.
And me? I have known the other hunger,
the nights the table sat bare,
when love looked thin as water
and the cupboard held only air.
But when I am caught by doubt,
I do what the hungry do:
I ask. I knock. I hold my plate out.
And the asking sees me through.
What I find works
is loving my neighbor
any way I can,
be it woman, be it man.
Being loving is being human.
I ask for forgiveness.
I look for connection.
I dance to the rock
of ecstatic perfection.
I read the Good Book,
I keep my eyes peeled
for that internal devil:
prejudiced scales
are never on the level.
And here is the secret,
plain as the bread:
Think of Love
as God’s favorite food.
We deserve
to serve it,
to give it away
warm from the oven,
day by day.
And the strangest thing about this bread:
the more of it you give,
the fuller you find your basket.
That is how the hungry live.
So come sit down. You’re expected.
There was always a chair for you.
The feast was never further
than the next kind thing you do.
Our love for one another
is God’s favorite meal.
Eat your fill, then feed somebody.
Taste it. It’s real.
Rob Chavez
1991 • tuned June 2026