Today has been almost summer-like. Very warm, very breezy, and very sleepy. A paper wasp worked under the eaves, a damselfly hunted in the irises, and something mantis-like prowled through the hydrangea. I did small, invisible chores in the house and in my office. Now I’m ready to find a quiet corner, curl up with the cats, and open the new book on my nightstand. Page one…
In case you’re wondering, the book is Rocks of Ages by Stephen Jay Gould.
Keeping House
I drifted all day
From stanza to stanza
Keeping house
The laundry sloshed and spun
A swirl of blues and grays
While I sorted and folded
The dry remains
Of yesterday
And I polished layers of dust
Into a desolate sonnet
Praising sloth
I translated the kitchen
Wrote its peculiar vocabulary of spice
Into cryptic recipes
And tilting volumes of scent
Then vacuumed the office
Where spines decayed to anonymous
Motes and filled the air
With sneezes
While in the bathroom sink
A single gray hair mocked
Recalled an absent metaphor
Each room and stanza resisted order
With all the hidden power of entropy
The secret law that governs socks
And salt and hungry ants
And these curls of shredded poems
That speak of duty
Rites and arcane lore
Kept in the rooms of my house
Published in Menagerie June 2010
Rae Spencer 