Crunch

Crunch "I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience." Poet John Ashbery. He wasn't the first one to say it, but crunch is spot on, as they say. Life could be soft and easily digestible, I guess – – if that's your preference. Actually, it might be mine, but I was blessed when you get right down to it, to have crunch enter in without my asking or even foreknowing. But it's one thing to receive our days as crunch, quite another to dish it out to others. I would rather not go down as cream of wheat, pablum to my peers. And when I'm laid away for good, there will be many a mastication--an eternity of earth chewing away, crushing the strongest box or urn. Whether worms or beetles or the heaving and moaning of my loamy home-- May my final sound be a cosmic crunch. Phil Hefner.