Butter

Butter, like love,

seems common enough

yet has so many imitators.

I held a brick of it, heavy and cool,

and glimpsed what seemed like skin

beneath a corner of its wrap;

the décolletage revealed

a most attractive fat!

And most refined.

Not milk, not cream,

not even crème de la crème.

It was a delicacy which assured me

that bliss follows agitation,

that even pasture daisies

through the alchemy of four stomachs

may grace a king's table.

We have a yellow bowl near the toaster

where summer's butter grows

soft and sentimental.

We love it better for its weeping,

its nostalgia for buckets and churns

and deep stone wells,

for the press of a wooden butter mold

shaped like a swollen heart.