The Heights to Which We Aspire

I broke a champagne flute yesterday. Kicked it over with my foot without ever seeing it and heard it shatter and scatter. It was empty, had no champagne, probably has never had any champagne in it. I'd been sipping a prosecco as I wrote. At first when I saw the damage, I knew I had to throw it away, but I decided to retain the biggest piece, so I washed it and rested it on the drying rack for an hour or so. After it had dried, I decided to make a poem out of it the next day. I rested two prosecco corks in its broken bowl and waited until today for an idea.


My basic idea was simple: I would leave two corks in its bowl (to represent the drink the flute usually held), and I would write something on a small piece of stiff paper and pierce it with the sharp spire of the flute to hold it aloft and in place. As I considered what to write, I forced the corks into the bowl to lodge them in place. I had forgotten that was a small piece of cracked glass still on the flute, and this flew off as I was working the corks into place. Afterwards, I lodged the corks in place, but the bottom of the bowl seemed empty, so when I spied a jar of tiny shark's teeth I decided to fill the bottom of the bowl with them. The sharp little teeth echoed the sharp spire of the broken flute.


With no idea of where to go with this, I wrote a majuscule W, giving its own bowls a jagged look reminiscent of the jagged spire rising up out of the bowl of the flute. I ended the W with "illn't," thus making a word that might appear to be good and regular English but which is totally unidiomatic, and I ended with the rest of a question about having a drink, making this an ironic little poem, an object poem, or not a poem at all. Whoever knows what anything is?


ecr. l'inf.