Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem, podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, November 22nd, 2003.

And in most American households, some Thanksgiving food prep is probably going on today,

which might mean there is a whole lot of butter in your house.

And today, we have two poems about butter,

the golden marble that seems to lubricate and enrich everything it touches. One of my favorite pieces of art is a still-life painting by Antoine Volan, entitled

simply Mound of Butter.

It hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., but a small replica of it hangs in my office

at work because I can't get enough of it.

It is, as the title suggests, a large, rich, yellowy mound of butter.

And it always reminds me of the fat of the land, the blessings of God, the simple but

enriching goodnesses of this life that are so close at hand, even when other things seem to be

so troubling.

Here is our first poem about butter, entitled Butter by Elizabeth Alexander.

And then our second poem about Butter, also entitled Butter by Andrea Cohen.

And both poems capture the simple ubiquity of Butter, but by the end, both of them hint at

butter's ability to act as a metaphor for something more profound.

This is Butter by Elizabeth Alexander.

My mother loves butter more than I do, more than anyone.

She pulls chunks off the stick and eats it plain, explaining cream spun around into butter.

Growing up, we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon and butter.

Butter and cheese on green noodles.

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