Four lines, one sentence, and a whole small drama of misdirected attention. Dave Bonta's "Tribute" sets up a ritual of remembrance: a meal, a toast, a dead cook being honoured. Then, in its last two lines, it admits that the person doing the remembering is thinking about someone else, himself. The title promises praise, but the poem delivers a confession.
The opening image is odd enough to stop a reader. "We dine on our knees" joins the posture of prayer and penance to the act of eating, and to a verb, "dine," that usually suggests tablecloths and ease. "On our knees" also carries its everyday meaning of being brought low. The line therefore holds ceremony, discomfort and a faint absurdity at once. Add "drink," and the scene begins to resemble a quiet sacrament. The poem never says so, but the kneeling, eating and drinking invite a religious reading, and the closing word "sin" confirms that this is the vocabulary it wants us to hear.
The most revealing structure is the pronouns. The first line belongs to "we" and "our," a group kneeling together. After that the poem narrows to "my dead cook," "my mind," "my own sin." That makes three "my"s in three lines. The speaker is physically among others but mentally alone, and the grammar shows it. "Own" in the last line is a small, hard word of possession, as if the sin were a belonging he keeps hold of even while the toast is raised. The phrase "my dead cook" is also telling. It implies a household and someone who worked in it. The cook has no name and is defined by a role and a possessive. "Dead" sits bluntly in front of "cook," with no softening euphemism. The person being honoured is barely present, even in the sentence that honours him.
The break between lines three and four is where the poem turns. "My mind taken up" pauses for a moment on a phrase that could mean something lifted and honoured, which is what a tribute should do. Then "with my own sin" corrects it. "Taken up" really means occupied or seized, and the passive construction matters. The speaker does not say he is thinking about his sin. His mind has been taken, and the sin is the one with agency. It is also telling that "taken" is the only two-syllable word in the poem. Nearly everything else is a hard monosyllable (dine, knees, drink, dead, cook, mind, sin). That one softer, slower word is the one that describes being captured.
There is no rhyme and no ornament, so the line breaks and sound do the work. The lines run to about five, six, five and four syllables, so the poem tapers like a voice dropping. The first line has two strong beats and the second stretches to three (drink, dead, cook). The ending then lands on two heavy stresses back to back, "own sin," which closes the poem with a thud rather than a resolution. The long "i" of "dine," "mind" and "my" threads through the lines, and the clipped "k" and "n" sounds of "drink," "cook" and "sin" keep the texture tight and plain.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it leaves unsaid. The sin is never named. Judging by the text, it might be connected to the cook, or it might have nothing to do with him, and that uncertainty is the point. If the sin were specified, we could weigh it and perhaps forgive it. Left blank, it expands until it fills the whole scene, and the dead cook is crowded out of his own tribute.
The poem is also honest in an uncomfortable way. It catches something many people recognise: at a funeral or a memorial, grief can get hijacked by private worry, and ritual words sit on top of an entirely different thought. The speaker does not hide this. By confessing that his attention has drifted, he performs the one act of sincerity available to him. Whether that redeems the failed toast is a question the poem leaves with the reader, still on their knees.