This poem is titled "The Bowl."
You can think of any kitchen bowl, that would be fine.
If you happen to think of the begging bowl carried
by Buddhist monks in traditional cultures,
where they go from household to household
and if their practice and contribution to the community
is not found worthy, nobody puts any rice in their bowl
and they go hungry.
There's also a small reference to a Les Blank film about
Werner Erhard that some of you might recognize,
and don't worry if you don't.
"The Bowl."
"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."