Every weekday, members of the Rosen, Powers, and Cole families may post haikus or other comments describing where they are or what they are thinking about that day.
Stuffed in a pillowcase, the still-warm sheets and coverlet await the week’s commute from bedroom’s altitude above the streets down to the basement laundry at the root, where, after days stretched taut across the bed, they’ll meet the tumbled frenzy, water-fed.
Descending stair by stair, I take the load past frames of photos, curtains, layers of paint, through rooms that bear the mark of memory’s code and halls still dark from soap and water’s taint. A window overlooks our little yard where winter lies upon the branches hard.
Brown leaves, brown dirt, brown rocks all striped with gray, some covered in a patchy sheet of ice, are intermixed like minutes of the day and frozen in a temporary splice, waiting for a temporary thaw. That was just in passing what I saw.
But layered down below, still out of reach, amid the worm trails, larvae, roots, and spore, a seedpod’s cotyledons can beseech the earth to move aside and yield more. This stirring of the forces not yet green is no less real, though neither heard nor seen.
And further on the stirring turns to red. The plates collide and rocks compress and heat. The rising magma flows belie the dead, and diamonds tumble out beneath our feet. What dampens the vibrations from the core to leave us standing upright on the floor?
I shake out new-washed sheets and tuck them tight, unfold the blankets, fluff the eiderdown. I’ll slide beneath the layers in the night and feel you touch the back of my nightgown. Even in the darkness I will know it’s through your fingers that the lavas flow.
That haiku inspired a longer poem:
ReplyDeleteSheets
Stuffed in a pillowcase, the still-warm sheets
and coverlet await the week’s commute
from bedroom’s altitude above the streets
down to the basement laundry at the root,
where, after days stretched taut across the bed,
they’ll meet the tumbled frenzy, water-fed.
Descending stair by stair, I take the load
past frames of photos, curtains, layers of paint,
through rooms that bear the mark of memory’s code
and halls still dark from soap and water’s taint.
A window overlooks our little yard
where winter lies upon the branches hard.
Brown leaves, brown dirt, brown rocks all striped with gray,
some covered in a patchy sheet of ice,
are intermixed like minutes of the day
and frozen in a temporary splice,
waiting for a temporary thaw.
That was just in passing what I saw.
But layered down below, still out of reach,
amid the worm trails, larvae, roots, and spore,
a seedpod’s cotyledons can beseech
the earth to move aside and yield more.
This stirring of the forces not yet green
is no less real, though neither heard nor seen.
And further on the stirring turns to red.
The plates collide and rocks compress and heat.
The rising magma flows belie the dead,
and diamonds tumble out beneath our feet.
What dampens the vibrations from the core
to leave us standing upright on the floor?
I shake out new-washed sheets and tuck them tight,
unfold the blankets, fluff the eiderdown.
I’ll slide beneath the layers in the night
and feel you touch the back of my nightgown.
Even in the darkness I will know
it’s through your fingers that the lavas flow.