Poetry
Saying Grace
By Liz Waldner
The spoon bends the world. The whole ceiling nestles in the bowl of the spoon. The bowl of the spoon cups the light in the room and serves it up. I offer my hands to receive it, themselves a cup but winged, hinged like the wings of a bird. The light in the spoon, too, flies; it has entered my eyes, but soft with the sound of wind in leaves. The leaves, my shelter. The cup, my shelter. Your hands, my shelter. The light, shelter. Who doesn’t have one asks, “Who needs a house?”
A faithful spoon bends the world to offer it up as what the heart likes best to eat. A hungry heart is good at spotting spoons. The hungry spoon? Its hungriness allows it to feed the rest of us. Its emptiness my home.
Liz Waldner grew up in rural Mississippi. Her poetry collections include: Play (Lightful Press, 2009); Trust (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009); Saving the Appearances (Ahsahta Press, 2004); and A Point Is That Which Has No Part (University of Iowa Press, 2000), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize and the Academy of American Poets’ Laughlin Prize.
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