This Week's Poem About Fall 2005

September 26, 2005
Noticed a couple of things in our house that I hadn’t seen before

From the bed in just the right light
I can see the row of rocks on the bathroom windowsill from a side elevation
pretty nearly silhouetted
which I normally see from above while standing in the shower
Their shapes from the side are quite different
More like eggs than disks

There’s a similar phenomenon
from my chair at the dining table looking into the kitchen
at the cityscape of bottles on top of the pantry
their shapes sharply outlined against the wall
looking much more related to one another than they do up close
forming the row as a whole

The satisfactory nature of groupings
of pleasing objects
(rocks, bottles)
lined up on ledges and seen from the side
creating a skyline of edges

And our geranium at long last
after many months of healthy green leaves and nothing more
has achieved a cheerful bunch of red flowers
waving at the end of a long swooping stalk
It thrills the hell out of me every morning when I walk in there
The spider plant is putting out a couple of contented looking tendrils
clearly indicative of well-being and general hopefulness, right?

On Sunday I did the weekly round
of laundry, housework, grocery shopping
And got to lie in bed that night
putting myself to sleep thinking of all I’d accomplished in the day
Even laundry contains a few small pleasures
Burying my face in the soft dry warm clean blue towel is one
And the mysterious scent of sunshine
that emanates from the fresh tablecloth as I unfold it and lay it on the table
is another
all the more enjoyable because
there is only one cloth left at the bottom of the drawer
that was dried on the line in the sun by my father over the summer
So there is not much more of that scent of sun preserved in cotton
left in our sideboard

Oh and the fireworks!
Saturday night we went out around nine o’clock for a drink with Jen and Tom
in Chinatown
as we drove up Grant
there was suddenly a fireworks display happening at the end of the street
celebratory and serendipitous
The rows of paper lanterns strung across the street were silhouetted
against the pink and pale yellow and gold bursts of light
Everyone came out on the sidewalk to watch
and we cheered in the car
It was the night before Jen’s birthday

image source is here