In My Living Room

There, There! Good Children! I say to the furniture gracing my space, semi-circling the weary gray eye of the television, as if it were the center of the world. It's tired, but YOU are to rest upon. Support for the watchers in my diminishing world: a Bentwood rocker, (made of bent wood?) Circle upon concentric circle positioned for prettiness and posture. Each piece, here, are rescues: "New to You, Purple Dove, Paws- ability." Found treasure, saved from destruction like the sad-eyed pups behind cages in the animal shelter. Desperate for someone's arms. Cushy couch, you are the arms around us, your five fat pillows, each one retrieved from the un- wanted shelf to form and reform a family, reclaiming their purpose to make a connection. Reveling in the compassionate company of an old piano bench, its lid upholstered in black velvet, beneath which sheets of music were stored, and beside a scalloped-edge table shaped like a fragile shell one might find on a beach. Saved from a languish in a Paris flea market, it lifts a lamp, its base a life-sized rabbit like he who dined on flowers in my front- porch garden when love was alive, his shade a black-death mushroom, lined inside in gold, showering sheltering light just enough and not to much to make us edgy, unlike the nightly less-than benign news from the black, black box.