Today’s post is a little late. I’ve been sick and living with brain fog and low energy. Our wintry weather made me think of a poem in my new book, The Anonymity of Waiting. It’s called, “The Snowflake and the Butter Dish.”
Many of my poems grow out of mundane moments. Life is intrinsically metaphoric. Universals come to us veiled in material things and circumstances. Christmas reminds us this is by design. This time of year we celebrate God coming to us in a human body. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” puts it this way: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.”
”The Snowflake and the Butter Dish” captures an instance where something mundane led me to meditate on beauty and divine reality. Merry Christmas!
The Snowflake and the Butter Dish
We have a deep butter dish
whose sides are always smeared
by our clumsy attempts
to scrape butter out
for toast, pancakes, or cooking.
But today, the butter dish is free from
clumps, swipes, and glops;
I realize my wife cleaned it
because we’re having visitors.
I smile and shake my head,
wondering if our guests will even use butter,
let alone scrutinize the inside of the dish.
Then I think of the snow this morning,
and how each snowfall is a garden
never repeated
whose lacework blooms we trample with boots,
uproot with shovels into dirty piles,
and salt until they weep into the gutters.
Even when God lays bouquets
of filagreed frost across our jacket sleeves,
we hardly notice
except to brush them off.
Whether beauty
is in the eye of the beholder,
I can’t say.
But I have found it
in the snowflake and the butter dish,
which I put away
after replacing the lid,
leaving the butter untouched.
A Wandering Minstrel 