07/09/2026
If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten.
If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked.
If a shoe is put into the bowl,
the leather is chewed and chewed over,
a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgotten.
A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.
Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness,
it eats them.
Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry.
The bowl cannot be thrown away.
It cannot be broken.
It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless,
and, big though it seems, fits exactly in two human hands.
Hands with ten fingers,
fifty-four bones,
capacities strange to us almost past measure.
Scented—as the curve of the bowl is—
with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop.
The Bowl, Jane Hirshfield via Mavis Moon
Bowl Study V, Bob Voynow, oil on board, 12 x 12 / 17 x 17 framed
Bowl Study 3, Bob Voynow, oil on board, 12 x 12 / 17 x 17 framed
Bowl, John Shedd Designs, ceramic, 17.5 x 17.5 x 6
