BY ROGER PAO
Come August, they flock back like geese in migration.I do not know the origins of these students.All I know is the ritual of their seasonal return, the ritual of their mealtime hunger.
Packing a pepper steak grinder, I watch them enter.They enter heavily, fullof books, much unlike birds. Like birds,their eyes are often filled with the strange innocence of preoccupation.
They search the plastic menu above my head for food.They order, then wait for me to fill their orders. I slice grilled chicken pizzainto eighths, I ladle marinara sauce over a paper plate of ziti.
School days persist into winter, and this ritual is the exchange of our love. We work.We are not forested from each other. O, how the scentof our native nourishmentreplenishes us!