Previously published in North American Review, this poem is also in my book, Embers on the Stairs'

Ode to the Toothpick

Not really tan, more like ecru,
fawn, tawny beige, presented
unshellacked and oddly

mismatched in a lidded box.
Shavings of thin veneer stamped
in clean tapered Bauhaus lines.

Singly they have no aroma,
but place your nose
to the small blue cardboard casket

and breathe the birch woods of Maine,
white-skinned, under a sky
of Botticelli blue.