Illuminations: Peek Inside

Dinner Roll Zen

Michael Meyerhofer, USA
influence: Zen Buddhism
(original influence : Roman Catholicism)

Wandering into the kitchen,
he finds his wife pressing dough
to make dinner rolls. He pauses

in the sweet smell of the dough
and comments on how dinner rolls
which are, of course, the dough’s

whole reason for being
cannot live up to this fine aroma,
as though something is always

lost in the act of becoming—
as though necessity breeds
the loss of some universal truth

to which his wife brushes flour
from her hands and tells him
to shut up and check the roast.