Why "Honey and Salt"?

In case you're wondering why I'm so hung up on honey and salt: "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." - Matthew 5.13 Honey and Salt by Carl Sandburg A bag of tricks—is it? And a game smoothies play? If you’re good with a deck of cards or rolling the bones—that helps? If you can tell jokes and be a chum and make an impression—that helps? When boy meets girl or girl meets boy— what helps? They all help: be cozy but not too cozy: be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so: then forget everything you ever heard about love for it’s a summer tan and a winter windburn and it comes as weather comes and you can’t change it: it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands— and nothing can be done about it—you wait and pray. Is there any way of measuring love? Yes but not till long afterward when the beat of your heart has gone many miles, far into the big numbers. Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection? All three—along with moonlight, roses, groceries, givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings, keepsakes and room rent, pearls of memory along with ham and eggs. Can love be locked away and kept hid? Yes and it gathers dust and mildew and shrivels itself in shadows unless it learns the sun can help, snow, rain, storms can help— birds in their one-room family nests shaken by winds cruel and crazy— they can all help: lock not away your love nor keep it hid. How comes the first sign of love? In a chill, in a personal sweat, in a you-and-me, us, us two, in a couple of answers .... There are sanctuaries holding honey and salt. There are those who spill and spend. There are those who search and save. And love may be a quest with silence and content. Can you buy love? Sure every day with money, clothes, candy, with promises, flowers, big-talk, with laughter, sweet-talk, lies, every day men and women buy love and take it away and things happen and they study about it and the longer they look at it the more it isn’t love they bought at all: bought love is a guaranteed imitation. Can you sell love? Yes you can sell it and take the price and think it over and look again at the price and cry and cry to yourself and wonder who was selling what and why. Evensong lights floating black night water, a lagoon of stars washed in velvet shadows, a great storm cry from white sea-horses— these moments cost beyond all prices. Bidden or unbidden? how comes love? Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow, a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle or a sash of light in a blue fog, a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist or a deep smoke winding one hump of a mountain and the smoke becomes a smoke known to your own twisted individual garments: the winding of it gets into your walk, your hands, your face and eyes.