Nothing arrives whole.
Everything comes folded~
creased at the edges,
tucked into itself
like a secret that forgot
how long it has been carried.
To be unpacked
is to let the day exhale,
to open the small, stubborn corners
where memory hides
like lint in a pocket.
I lift each moment
from its hiding place~
a peach warm in my palm,
a kitchen light trembling
on the rim of a glass,
a childhood street
still smelling faintly
of percolator coffee
and women laughing
in their housecoats.
Unpacked,
the world softens.
It stops pretending
to be tidy.
It spills~
slow, honest,
like a drawer finally opened
after years of silence.
And I stand there
my hands full of the past
realizing none of it
was ever lost.
It was only waiting
for me
to unfold it.
A museum exhibit
Showed 200 years
Of clothing for women
In varied careers.
It also had items
To wear in the home –
The aprons and housecoats
Not oft in a poem.
The garters and girdles
Made us reminisce
About underwear parts
Not one woman would miss.
Certain styles have evolved
While some retro ones last,
But I’m happy some things
Have remained in the past.
His wife dies.
You have seen it all before,
you can tell what will happen next.
He will recline in the home
that she has woven around him.
He will let the ivy
of their long years together
coil around his somnambulant thoughts.
The house grows imperceptivity
into a mausoleum.
Some warmth remains,
within her carpet slippers
and housecoats.
He keeps them close.
The cat will always be
the shadow of her hand.
He is a watcher,
not at the funeral or the cemetery,
but from the other side of a bed.
He arranges ornaments,
puts them back the way they were.
Takes out fading photographs
of them both on vacation,
good times, also
times when heartbreaking rocks
had to be climbed.
He places all those sepia moments
into a shoe box
she has provided,
knowing he would need it.
He still fills her housecoats on cold nights.
The cat will always be the shadow of his hand.
He dwells on in this home as a recycling
of images that she swirls now with a finger
in the kitchen sink
while cleaning the china plates
he once bought for her.
He still molds his shape
in the stained fabric of his recliner.
His presence decorates and
remodels her un-passing thoughts.
The widow mourns, not at the cemetery,
but from the other side of a double bed.
She acknowledges
new days and their empty dawns
by arranging once shared nick-knacks
by not touching them at all.
She does however
place some sepia moments
in a shoe box he had provided
before the days turned colorless.
She still fills her housecoats
on cold nights.
The cat will always be
the shadow of her hand.
He will dwell in this home
that she wove around his recliner,
scrimshawing each thought
with her presence.
He mourns, not at the cemetery,
but from the other side
of a double bed.
He rearranges nick-knacks
by not touching anything.
He does however
place some sepia moments
in a shoe box
she has provided.
An elderly man's wife dies.
You have seen it before,
you can tell what will happen next.
He will recline in the home
that she wove around him.
Some warmth remains
to pad carpet slippers and housecoats.
The cat will always be
the shadow of her hand.
He is a watcher
not at the funeral or the cemetery
but from the other side of a bed.
He arranges things
then puts them back the way they were.
He places sepia moments
back into a shoe box
that she has provided.
there is no house of God.
but there is a single bedroom apartment of God.
televangelists asleep on the floor
the convent too, dozes -
their manic addresses bring slumber,
wearing pious housecoats
and their belief on their sleeves.
"no girls allowed," said in muttered acclaim
in plumes of verbal smoke, billowing
from loyalty, from unconscious tongues of chimney.
when they rise, rent must be paid.
bi-weekly in assembly,
payments of obedience; collected in baskets
passed from choirboy to choirboy with little question -
here there is no tolerance for question.
no drops of leeway beneath the leaking ceiling.
should other religions come knocking, the door is locked.
inside sneering outwardly,
narrowly, through a peephole
the occupants brimming with superiority.
clutching rosary beads, they sing their own tune
and fear and consider the landLord - He's vengeful.
He promises things, in His twisted sense of humour
and in the single bedroom apartment of God,
the tenants are terrified.
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