Quotidian

In Competition No. 3009 you were invited to submit a poem about a domestic object.
 
I set this challenge with Philip Larkin’s ‘The Mower’ in mind, which he wrote in the summer of 1979 after inadvertently killing a hedgehog while cutting the grass. According to Betty Mackereth, Larkin’s secretary and onetime lover, he told her about the incident ‘…in his office the following morning with tears streaming down his face’.
 
Your poems made me smile rather than cry: this was another popular comp that drew an entry packed with wit and inventiveness. Alanna Blake, Nathan Weston and Mae Scanlan stood out, and the winners, below, take £25 each.

O simple implement, no shrewd machine,
No moving parts — just handle wed to bowl.
Armed with no more, we face the great unseen
And trust in one spoonful to taste the whole.
 
A curve as casual as bone or bough,
The grace of flesh in sleek metallic lines.
How minuscule each captured taste, and how
Immense the cosmos one spoonful defines.