The Biscuit Barrel Copyright © 2009 James Knox Whittet

It was the only prize you ever won,
that biscuit barrel with the silvered rim,
untouched and untainted by any crumb.
It smugly watched its squat reflection swim
in the sea's light that flooded the dresser,
polished on fuchsia-blown afternoons
of summer, no mounted clock could measure;
with drifting scents of warming, rising scones
from that Aga with a mind of its own.
It sat there, waiting, like an empty urn,
mirroring moving shadows of flames thrown
by the brass fender when scorched beech logs turned
and fell when you died in the room above
that barrel shaped and altered by your love.