Auction

Here I am, again, in these auction rooms
browsing the silverware section for old spoons.
 
Jam spoons, salt spoons, teaspoons with wrythen knops
(a mint boxed set complete with sugar nips),
 
a George III shell-bowled sauce ladle,
a silver christening spoon with nail-head finial,
 
a dozen apostle spoons, each saint with his emblem
finely wrought at the tip of a grooved stem,
 
even repoussé berry spoons – Victorian bling –
each one a perfect treasure. All these darlings
 
laid out like pale corpses on velvet or silk
or rubber-banded tightly, shank to shank,
 
begging me to buy them, no matter how dear,
and tuck them up at home in my cutlery drawer.  

Hilary Menos

Poem published in Fear of Forks, 2022, HappenStance

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