The Kettle

 So simple in construction –

but who first thought

to fashion that shape,

add spout and handle?

And who before them

found that leaves dropped

into boiling water

blossomed, made tea?

Or that clay transformed

to porcelain? And who

took fire and tamed it?

An untraceable regression –

but one which leads back

from this corner of the kitchen,

through centuries, millennia,

to a moment of discovery

on the margins of
a vast and unmapped plain.

Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips