Meditações - understand the clock moves

Lares and Penates

The suburbs? Well, for heaven’s sake  

who wouldn’t choose the absolute  

convenience? Cheap, a quick commute,  

and close to Lowe’s, a Steak ’n Shake,  

our own police and DMV,  

          a library, a lake.  

                    

Esteemed domestic diplomats,  

we trump conundrums (His and Hers)  

and smother any fuss that stirs  

the air of habit habitats.  

It’s not an easy job; in short,  

          we wear a lot of hats.  

 

And so, we’re grateful, from the street  

you’d miss the issues we’re ignoring:  

termites and week-old dishes mooring,  

barnacled with shredded wheat,  

the bunch of brown bananas stuck  

          with a yellow Post-it: Eat!

 

We dictate chores, but understand  

the clock moves faster than we do  

and focus on those old and blue  

dilemmas of the second hand:  

inheritance, ill-fitting pants,  

          smoke, rumors, foreclosed land.  

 

Winters, we help keep track of taxes,  

sort copies Xerox-hot in piles,  

or prune unruly hanging files  

(a fixture of our weekend praxis).  

There’s always something. In this house,  

          only the cat relaxes—

 

because the clutter drives a need  

for more, more room, more hours, food,  

more use of the subjunctive mood . . .  

tomorrow, yes, we must succeed  

in keeping peace and making time  

          to garden, and to read.  

 

Still, every spring our porches spawn  

insects we can’t identify  

and ferns turned freeze-dried octopi.  

They spill into the arid lawn  

with diasporic fliers, clover  

          and choirs of woebegone  

 

house sparrows whose incessant cheeping  

recalls the gloomy Ubi sunt,  

our soundtrack to the nightly hunt  

for whatever is downstairs, beeping.  

(As if the sleepless wanted some  

          reminder they’re not sleeping.)  

 

But don’t fret; clarity, if brief,  

is possible. The best folks see  

an artfulness in entropy—  

the rust, the dust, the bas-relief  

of Aquafresh-encrusted sinks.  

          So when, in disbelief,  

                    

a lady skims new catalogs,  

convinced her luster’s fading, faded,  

and, afraid to end up jaded,  

doughy in orthotic clogs,  

she gracefully accepts her fate  

          and rises early. Jogs.

Caki Wilkinson