A Spoon is a Spoon is a Spoon

My wooden spoon gazes at me
with its spotted brown eye.
Perfectly immobile on the porcelain plate,
the spoon is ready to serve me well.
It doesn’t dream of a different shape.
For the spoon, its concavity is beautifully carved,
and its tail is neither too long nor too short.
The spoon doesn’t wish to be made of stainless steel,
not even of silver or gold.
It doesn’t crave to be darker, or lighter, or a different
shade.
And it has nothing against those freckles.

My kitchen is the exact place where my spoon wants to
be—
not in Hawaii, stirring a sweet-bitter pineapple sauce,
not in Bombay, mixing ginger and chili for spicy masala
dosa,
not even in Florence, crushing garlic for
sizzling hot spaghetti con pomodoro.
My spoon doesn’t belong to me, but to itself.

The spoon doesn’t compare itself with other spoons.
It doesn’t envy other spoons’ elegance, way of living, or
homes,
it doesn’t dream of resting the whole day at ease,
and when it rests, it doesn’t feel useless.
Everything the spoon does—or doesn’t—is perfection.
My spoon never complains of being a spoon.
It doesn’t wish to be a fork, a movie star,
or a mansion on the French Riviera.

Some evenings, after I’ve stirred my stew,
when I rest my head, exhausted,
on the kitchen table, next to the spoon,
I breathe the fresh air of the forest,
I hug the bark of the apple tree my spoon was made of.
I see its shaking leaves, taste its fruit.
And if I focus for long enough, I hear, beyond the gurgle
of the river, the branch’s solemn oath:
I swear to be a spoon and nothing but a spoon,
so help me God.

Then I wish—even if I’d never confess this to my husband,
nor to my best friend—I wish, just for a second,
to be a spoon.