The wedding-present toast rack: how it stood
for order, regularity, in life.
A breakfast table, set, on polished wood
or freshly-laundered cloth; a butter knife,
spoons for the jams and choice of marmalade,
matched cups and saucers, milk jug, golden toast
and soft-boiled eggs, and conversations made
around the news and early morning post.
Now we snatch breakfast on the run - at best
a gulp of instant coffee, hasty bite
at something from a packet; e-mails, lest
a tweet's emerged to disrupt, overnight,
the school-run, the precarious career.
What's happened to the toast rack? No idea.