A Meal

A Meal

Michael Yost

There’s something holding in and up the edges
Of our whole universe, the crystal lip
Keeping the wine from spilling on the cloth
Which rests, outspread, on swung-out drop leaf ledges.

There’s something framing it in filigree
Gold trim, fantastic round the rim of bone
Ground fine, and heated into form,
Of porcelain, with lacquered fleur-de-lis.

White candles lend it the low lights that blend
Both passing joy, and long anticipation
Which is the unknown guest at every meal,
The grace at its beginning and its end.

There may be, after supper, port and cigars.
Its scheme and map may be a formal nonsense,
Quite free from all necessity, that men
Might empty blood, bread, roasts and caviars,

Into the dark of an imagined (yet
Not one whit less required) need.
The speech should be refined, amusing, taut,
The service silver like an amulet,

And every gesture kept within its bounds,
So that the whole is borne in every part,
Like champagne flutes that clink together well,
The moon-bright boat of sauce that makes the rounds.

There now, the meal is ending. See each guest
Depart alone into the outer room.
The conversation may continue there,
(Perhaps they now have fallen into rest.)

But each knows that the ritual’s complete.
And they have been there; joined its formal work
Without pretension, or denial of
Their nature, silent and replete.

---

Michael Yost
Poet & Writer

Michael is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. His essays and poems have been published in places like First Things, Modern Age, and the University Bookman. These can be read at poetryofmichaelyost.com and at his substack, The Weight of Form..

Painting by George Leslie Hunter (Scottish, 1879-1931)