Spooning

Aug 27 2012

Spoons nest.

I find them in the dish-rack, spooning together,

as if their loneliness

were unbearable.

Like lovers reuniting

they fall into embrace, clinging tightly

waiting for the drawer to close.

Because in the dark

who knows

what cutlery gets up to?

Spoons are demur.

They dip in, lightly

take lady-like bites

nibble with the tip of the bowl.

And graceful handles

that are happiest

held.

While forks are bold;

a weapon, barely suppressed.

I notice my reflection

in the concave surface

is topsy-turvy.

A fun-house mirror, cracking jokes,

as it scoop up yolks

jiggles Jell-O

holds its own.

My empty spoon, a needy void,

keen to serve

and me to fill.

My empty spoon, a cry for help,

seeks equal spoons

to nestle with.

Domestic bliss, fulfilled

in a brimming dish-rack.

I'm jumping the gun on this one, putting it up as soon as it was written. So I'll likely be revisiting this, revising and reworking. But in this respect, a first draft isn't that much different than the polished version. It seems a poem is never done; and I'm always tempted to tweak, fine-tuning the life out of it. 

But I haven't written much lately. And the 3 poems I have backlogged aren't (yet) good enough even for this poor orphaned blog! So I'm taking advantage of my usual initial enthusiasm to get this one down. A blog, after all, is in need of attention. 

It was inspired by a review (in this weekend's Globe and Mail) of Lorna Crozier's latest book, The Book of Marvels:   A Compendium of Everyday Things. I love her sensibility:  her poetic prose, and her confident sense of fun and wonder.  And I greatly enjoy writing about small diurnal things:  the mindfulness of microcosm, the pleasure of close observation. And perhaps I find this easier, as well:  the discipline of small things evades the pretension of big themes, while microcosm provides its own inherent boundaries. This is useful, in that it limits things. This is similar to the way the strictures of formal poetry limit choice and impose structure; and how in turn this can make the writing easier -- as counter-intuitive as this at first seems -- than free verse. 

My spoons often find their way together in the dish-rack. They don't dry well this way, which is a bit frustrating. On the other hand, there is the wonder of inanimate objects that appear to have moved!