This is the last poem I'll be writing to a Monday deadline. I'll keep posting poems as I write them, though, so keep checking back periodically. (If this is you first time on my blog, check out my earlier poems as well. There are more than 200 of them.)
Putting Away the Spoons
When I unload the dishwasher.
I place the spoons in separate stacks:
one for the curved handles,
another for the flat.
A bit of neatness
in this messy life.
But when my wife’s sister
came to live with us –
her blood and brain polluted
by the waste her failing liver
could not purge – my systems
were upset by her addled efforts
to be helpful: bug spray mistaken
for carpet cleaner, the vacuum
constantly clogged with debris
she couldn’t see, and the silverware
a jumbled mess until her final days.
Now, after a few years of order,
our daughter has returned home
with her cats, her lizards, and her tears
mourning her boyfriend’s overdose,
gradually getting her life together.
And when I see the spoons
in disarray again, I know a little
disorder is better than early death.
Putting Away the Spoons
When I unload the dishwasher.
I place the spoons in separate stacks:
one for the curved handles,
another for the flat.
A bit of neatness
in this messy life.
But when my wife’s sister
came to live with us –
her blood and brain polluted
by the waste her failing liver
could not purge – my systems
were upset by her addled efforts
to be helpful: bug spray mistaken
for carpet cleaner, the vacuum
constantly clogged with debris
she couldn’t see, and the silverware
a jumbled mess until her final days.
Now, after a few years of order,
our daughter has returned home
with her cats, her lizards, and her tears
mourning her boyfriend’s overdose,
gradually getting her life together.
And when I see the spoons
in disarray again, I know a little
disorder is better than early death.
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