There are thousands upon thousands of poems about
love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But
here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh
and new way, in terms of table salt.
Love Like Salt
It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher
It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought
It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it
We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
It breaks out on our foreheads
We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins
At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.
Reprinted from Alive
Together: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press,
1996) by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 1996 by Lisel
Mueller. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The
Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
Ted Kooser is the U.S. Poet Laureate. For more
information, go to www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2005.
