Poem 42

I got the idea for this poem while reading Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop, a good book that is not about salt or corporate mascots. The girl and her little smile caught in my brain and eventually I thought about here little two-dimensional cylinder of a world. It reminded me of remembering mundane things, how they come back around and catch us as if we were walking a cylinder of our own.
Th Morton Salt Girl is a trademark of Morton International Inc. It has iodine in it to help prevent goiters.

The Morton Salt Girl

Dress buttoned at the top
but doing nothing to protect
her legs from the wind
as it slants rain into nylon,
she glows in the blue of night.
Under her arm,
the one grocery her
mother requested
spills out even in rain
that would clump flour
and starch.
Kept flowing by calcium silicate,
the salt finds the sidewalk
to be trod under
the feet of men,
to turn puddles into oceans.

Smiling at her own footsteps
as they splash into the dark,
she barely notices the
nutrition information like neon
that gleams to light her way
on the back of the container.
Here, walking by herself at night,
she listens to rain against umbrella
even as it masks the sound of salt
and her mother’s future complaint.

It’s one of those things
that you’re supposed to forget:
a simple chore in fall weather.
Not much going on,
but traipsing the cylinder,
each step pushing forward,
you’ll be here again,
spilling salt or
walking with the rain,
in yellow.