An Old Tin Cup

Engraved into its metal are four rings, one-half cup each.

True round? Long ago relinquished, with history’s marks:

A crunched dent, two flattened sides, dull veneer well earned.

One baker, then the next, had packed it away with the salt,

All-purpose flour, baking soda, and bags of dry goods.

A couple hash-marks point to middling levels, low and high.

Two-thirds cup, a cup and a third. Slight allowance to exist

Between the regular lines of expectation. It’s an old

Tin cup, you see, its handle slightly twisted over time.

It knew Mother’s hands first, wife then matriarch.

She too had four lines, engraved into her mettle,

Sons who marked her fullness, gave texture to her form.

She kissed each at night, long after they had left home,

Regular lines to livelihood, a tenacious family heritage.

Those lines once held an infant daughter between them,

A slight dent in the family frame, then released, mourned, 

Accepted. Life’s force departed, blessed but uncontained.

Mother perfect in the round grew less true, but real.

Pregnant with her touch, it knew a son’s hands next.

Husband, father, teacher, but here, a brother and uncle,

Baker of bread, lover of words, purveyor of precision.

“I have something to give you,” he said, the old tin cup

In his hands. A luminous and willing lineage breathed

In those words, a transmission smiling with inheritance.

How does an artisan of intention and intellect, with

Inquiry as love’s ingredient, give himself in life’s measure?

An old tin cup, its handle slightly twisted over time.

Shaped by strength, will and devotion, this treasure

Now speaks its secrets to a granddaughter and a niece.

Its words are beyond their words, its sense within sense.

Ancient hungers seek their repast, full of unseen food,

Present ones ferment hope, a harbinger of this family,

A dispenser of care, a sign of hungers met, with bread. 

Stories arrive this way, the ones that nourish well:

Ordinary in flour, dull in veneer with dented forms,

Old tin cups, handles twisted together forever, over time.