First Course

I could have told you
of the familiarity of the spoon
in the soup:
of my welling sadness
in seeing the handle skate the surface.

And you could have told me
of what has not been lost:
of the submerged bowl
and it’s unforgotten potential.

I could have told you
that form and function
are still understood
in the milky colloid of the recent past,
but that the spoon stops being a spoon.

I could have told you
of the strange melancholy of literalism

and I could have told you
how the memory of soup
refuses the ink of the spoon,

and I would have told you this
if it was my hand on the pen of the spoon,
and not yours, stirring.

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