Toast Rack Ode

Toast Rack Ode

by

Marisa Marsey

 

There’s been much ballyhoo o’er the centuries-old toast rack

Comments across the pond – and blogosphere – too numerous to track

Seems this quirky and quaint bit of British frippery

Famed for keeping toast from getting soggy and slippery

Inflames passions in many both con and pro

Heated enough to char loaves, even those of sourdough

But perhaps what it needs most, this lil’ ol’ toast rack,

Is nothing more than a good PR flack

For its name sounds like a device of torture,

Wielded by malevolent lords in ancient Yorkshire

But spin it as an objet d’art, not schlock

Something they’ll swallow, any kind of crock

Tout its multi-tasking nature, be an improviser,

Use it as a mail sorter or CD divider

A place to splay fingers and toes when drying nail polish

Not just for breakfast with the upper crust of Dawlish

Indeed, it engages so many parts of our lives

I’ve got it – it should also be a place to store knives

And give it a look of more modernity

So it won’t wind up clogging a landfill for all eternity

The toast rack of the future should be more than a throwback

Like watching reruns of I Love Lucy or Kojak

Make it “green” as well as sexy and sleek

It really shouldn’t take more than a tweak

But if the major grouse be just that your slice gets cold (such a bore!)

Slip it under a heat lamp, haven’t they got them at The Grosvenor?

Now, let’s ask those among us who’ll throw the first stone

Perhaps this ado just proves man does not live by bread – or toast rack – alone.