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 decolletage revealed 
a most attractive fat! 

And most refined. 
Not milk, not cream, 
not even creme de la creme. 
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.