Another life ago,
he bought the huge heavy blue and white bowl
the week after his wife of twenty-plus years
left him for the trite trope of another man.
He stood in Bed, Bath & Beyond
puzzling over what a thread count is
and pondering how one outfits a new life
out of such stuff as towels and kitchen tools.
The bowl was the one sure thing he knew
he needed to connect with the comforting continuity
of his mother kneading dough at the kitchen table
where, as a boy, he watched three perfect loaves rise.
The bowl mirrored his own vast longing emptiness.
Now, all these years and another wife later,
he looks around at the home they've made
as he comes in from walking the dog
and watches as she washes that same bowl,
not knowing that she is thinking
of him standing perplexed in the store,
as fragile as a panoply of pottery,
amazed that the bowl is still intact
through all their moves without one chip,
just a few scratches where metal spoons stir
flour and yeast concoctions into new creations
that regularly rise from out of the empty midst.