Long Playing Egg Poem

Eggs: Omelet with Caviar, Chive Crême Fraiche; Lobster Roll, Connecticut Style with Old Bay and Tarragon. Champagne. 
Song: "I Got the..." by Labi Siffre
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Poem: "Toadstools" by Charles Wright

Toadstools

The toadstools are starting to come up,
                                                              circular and dry.
Nothing will touch them,
Gophers or chipmunks, wasps or swallows.
They glow in the twilight like rooted will-o’-the-wisps.
Nothing will touch them.
As though little roundabouts from the bunched unburiable,
Powers, dominions,
As though orphans rode herd in the short grass,
                                                       as though they had heard the call,
They will always be with us,
                                              transcenders of the world.
Someone will try to stick his beak into their otherworldly styrofoam.
Someone may try to taste a taste of forever.
For some it’s a refuge, for some a shady place to fall down.
Grief is a floating barge-boat,
                                               who knows where it’s going to moor?

Notes:
The eggs. I sent a picture of this meal to a friend with the caption: "Billionaire's Brunch or Death Row Last Meal." He replied, "A powerful, satirical critique of wealth inequality, institutional cruelty, and the commodification of human life. The two titles force the viewer to confront how society assigns value to the ultra wealthy versus the condemned." Exactly. And eats real good.

The song. I don't think Labi Siffre and I have that much in common. Except, based on this album cover,  how we roll in our respective chateaux any given Tuesday. 

Thus, I think I could Labi would approve of this egg set up.

I’m going with divided plates this week. Bisected unities. Fish eggs on Chicken roe. Low omelet and high caviar. High lobster and low bun. Labi’s mashed two songs into one here, or built one song from two chambers. When a thing breaks in two, it begs the questions– which part serves the other? What came first, the little egg or the big egg? You’d think the big egg. But on the other hand, chickens came after dinosaurs. Who’s boss: caviar omelet or lobster roll? Which half of the Labi track is supreme? Were the parts designed from the whole or the whole from the parts?

Charles Wright’s poem also comes in two parts. We’re noodling on mushrooms, just staring at them and thinking, getting a little deep. And because death is a thing we are always aware of, that starts to darken the edges of our thought. And then: Grief is floating barge boat / who knows where it’s going to moor?

I think Wright is acutely aware of breaks. He takes the broken, offset line from Tang Dynasty poems and makes it his own thing– the “two step.” Here he’s got that signature two-step in four places, but the whole poem makes a two step from mushrooms into grief. I think you could take my banquet apart and enjoy the champagne, or the omelet with caviar, or the lobster roll, and be content. Likewise with Labi Siffre’s “I Got the…” You could take half and groove out. Yes, the part loses something by its unframing and it loses something else by the death of cross-currencies (the champagne not saucing the caviar, the bite of omelet not carrying into the lobster and tarragon), but they can still stand on their own. Not so with Wright’s “Toadstools.” Is this poem recognizable if it ends before the weird “floating barge boat” of grief? The words, sure, but there is something, an energy darkly tugging the poem (and its tugging that floating barge boat too) along, and if it stops before grief, I don’t think the poem earns its dark wisdom.