March 26, 2024

ribbon

My fingers are moving, but not on this keyboard. Instead, they’ve opened
a bag of frozen mushrooms, sliced a quarter stick of butter, given a shake 
to the jar of olive oil, turned the cast iron pan on high. There’s nothing to report 
except how glad I was not to have slipped on the ice, and how the cashier
looked straight into my eyes, and that everything I bought fit into a canvas bag.
If you were looking for poetry, perhaps I can point your attention to the quartet
of ladybugs traversing a front window, the smell of shallots frying, 
the thin ribbon of honey I’ve unspooled into my teacup, a memory I’m 
carrying just now of lunch at the Driftless Café and the bookstore whose aisles 
I wandered without picking up a single book or opening a single page.