As the wine is poured and the cubes of cheese circulate
in an attempt to cut the tension of people
sitting awkwardly in a too perfect room,
I look around trying to find something to interest me,
a book or a sculpture to ask my pleasant smiling host about.
If one is to sit awkwardly sipping wine
and stuffing cubes of cultured gruyere into one’s mouth
one will be not be invited back
into this world of too perfect people
in their pristine rooms.
Quickly, I must find something to jar this silence
before someone else takes the limelight.
Not the newspaper, not the carpet or the draperies.
Aha, I found it. A small wooden figurine sitting
atop an impressive book shelf with well aged
copies of Voltaire, Descartes, Nietzsche and others
who sit lonely like their wines,
aged to perfection but never opened.
She sees my fascination
and flashes her bleached teeth
as she recounts a tale
of how her husband got it
from an Indian Shaman
in British Colombia.
I smile.
I know that ebony figurine
is an African fertility carving—
clearly stripped of its magic
in this place.