Skip to content

Each Morning Again

As store windows are darkening and displays
are taken down—that is when she walks home,
tired. To take off her good shoes.

To her husband. What to express about
another such day? The given hand
composes shopping lists. As if reminders

were wanted, of the staples, every week the same.
(Though is it any better how produce changes,
so seasonal and fickle and wilt-prone?)

She goes home to the cat, to pet him
where he poses, always on the edge
of the room, as if considering exiting.

*

But the jeweled necklaces, kept safe overnight,
are lifted back into view, onto mannequins’
velvet throats, each morning again.

Bodies rise everywhere. To possibility
and could be. Poets return to making metaphors’
pairs, which must be unexpected. And the cat,

it turns out, loves this life, surprisingly much.
When he becomes ill, he struggles to, once more,
map the neighborhood by familiar odors.

Now, in the remains of earlier prey, strands
of worms shine and curl. Their time
just beginning. The eggs like pearls.