Ode to the straightness of your back
as you sit at the table

I watch you sit at the table,
with straight back and soft shoulders,
talking to me, or typing,
or calling family on the phone.

Your manner and movement
immerse me in ease.

Your words and rhythm
encircle me in calm.

You sit patiently at the table,
with straight back and soft shoulders,
talking, typing,
or calling on the phone.

You will never believe
how beautiful you are.

Ode to the happiest steps I’ve climbed

I walk the short, sloped driveway,
up the two cement steps
and the four tiled steps
to your door.

I ring the doorbell.

You pull open the wooden door,
and push open the glass door,
and smile, and invite me in.

Ode to your dishwasher
 
After breakfast my love
takes her bowl and glass to wash them
in the small creek of the sink.
But after the well-attended dinner,
she takes the plates and pots and pans
to the mouth of the river.
She takes the stacked dishes
to the dishwasher.

Open jaw
with a hundred rubberized teeth,
with slots and baskets
to secure and carry
the porcelain, glass, and silver,
with wider molars below,
to clasp the clumsiness of pots and pans,
you are the receptacle that receives
the remnants of the day,
the basin that collects
whatever can be renewed,
whatever can be filled and used again.

You are the uncomplaining helper,
the ever-ready assistant,
who adds his watery voice
to the after-dinner conversation.
You are the waterfall
through which
each utensil passes
on its circular journey
from cabinet back to cabinet
and from drawer back to drawer.
You are the crystal pool
where the silverware swim,
shining their teeth and tails.
You are the pond where the pans
soak their water-lily leaves.

And, next morning,
you are emptied,
with a syncopated series of sounds,
with the opening and closing of cabinets,
with the swish and jingle of drawers,
with a clink and clank like the sound
of a knight storing a suit of armor.

Ode to your china cabinets
 
Glass cabinets,
mounted to the ceiling,
above the kitchen counter that separates
the dinner table from the kitchen,
your china seems weightless,
suspended in air,
waiting to be plucked
like porcelain fruit from a branch.

My love gathers her harvest,
plate, bowl, wine glass, glass,
filling her basket
with assorted shapes and sizes,
then arranges them, carefully,
in still-life patterns
on the canvas of the table.

And when her guests arrive,
she offers a meal and merriment
beneath the translucent branches,
beneath the shiny shade,
beneath the weightless canopy
of porcelain and crystal.

Ode to a painting of a girl playing piano
 
I lie back on the loveseat and gaze
at a painting above the piano
of a girl playing piano.
Her back is to me,
and her piano is the same
as the piano beneath the painting.

The girl sits all day at her piano
and plays in silence.

Then my love sits down,
with her back to me,
at the piano beneath the painting,
and I suddenly hear
what the girl is playing.

Ode to the timer on your living-room lamp
 
The timer clicks and the light shines,
surprising you and me
in the shadows of early evening.

We’ve been talking for hours,
lost in the give and take
of speculation and opinion,
of debate and deliberation,
considering how to teach
and encourage imagination.
You’ve spoken with passion,
and I’ve spoken with passion,
and we’ve both played apologist
in order to more fully understand.

The world outside has continued,
unnoticed, slipping from day to dusk,
until the electric click
and sudden illumination.

Now it’s time to turn
to evening endeavors—
a bite to eat, recalling
the day’s pleasures,
the poem you’d like to read,
the song I’d like to sing,
the podcast we can listen to
together—a fresh procession
of uncounted hours
leading to preparing for bed,
to candlelight,
to unhurried embrace,
until we finally drift
to the kitchen for water.

Then the timer clicks off
and we’re drenched in darkness,
except for the light
of the microwave clock,
recalling the world of hours
and confirming that it is,
in fact,
three o’clock in the morning.

Ode to your upright piano
 
Lonely piano,
waiting to be played,
I know what it feels like
to long for her touch,
to long for the feel
of her fingers upon you,
and long for her
to sit by your side
and share
the hours of the day.

There was a time
she worked
to know you better,
a time she pressed you
to sing for me.
It was a time of blossom
and growth,
a time of tenderness,
and the desire to please.

Sad piano,
don’t be discouraged,
you know she knows
where you are
and what you offer,
you know she knows
the melodies you contain,
and she knows
that you are waiting,
and only has to decide
that today is the day
to sit down
and begin to play.

Ode to your dining table
 
Small, wooden table,
with four chairs squaring
your roundness,
you spend most of your day
as the desk
where my loved one works,
sending punctuated signals
into cyberspace.

You are the center of everything,
the nexus that connects
one room to the others,
one person to another,
and each day to the next.
You are the first place
my love sits in the morning,
and the last place
she sits before bed,
and when sleep doesn’t come,
you are the pre-dawn companion
who keeps her company
through the night.

On special occasions you expand
to accept additions to your surface
and length to your perimeter,
embracing new visitors
and random chairs.
Upon your back is laid
the bounty of the world,
while above your leaves
shines a shared light,
and a smiling exchange of eyes.

You are simple, and solid,
and ask nothing
but to stand and support,
to carry and offer and serve.

Ode to your refrigerator
 
A sea of snapshots,
a smorgasbord of smiling faces,
secured with magnets,
overlapping,
shoulder to shoulder,
populates your refrigerator door
and charges your kitchen
with a cheer of celebration,
with a chorus
of unbridled moments,
with a spontaneous embrace
of youth and vigor
and pulsating pureness.

It is impossible to open
your refrigerator door
without optimism
for what’s inside,
and, when it’s open,
in the wide yawn
of its chilling mouth,
another explosion,
a cornucopia
of color and shape:
bottles, jars, little boxes,
and the natural groupings
of the bright parade of produce.

Your refrigerator is
the open hand of abundance,
the primal source of existence,
the unlimited hope and bounty
of repeated rejoicing,
the assurance of living
and the brimming well of wellness.
It is the great fortune fully felt
by the ever-grateful soul
who seats me at her table and says,
“What can I get you to eat?”

Ode to the photographs on the shelves
on each side of your fireplace
 
The photographs of your family,
framed in little frames,
watch your life
from their place upon the shelves.

They are the reflections
of the different parts of you,
the stories of your life
woven into theirs.
They are stories that lead
to a captured moment in time,
and then go on
to another place and time.

They keep time past from becoming past,
and keep all times present in the present.

You move through your house
like moving through a reunion,
and each photo transports you
to a place beyond your place,
to another path and moment
branching from your center.

Your house, like your heart,
is where the times and places
of your life meet and mingle.

When I step into your home,
I start a journey through your heart.