After Nineteen Years

 

 

After Nineteen Years

  

Our odometer begins to shine

like an emerald, proclaiming

we’ve been traveling all our lives.

 

                                           D. Nurske

                                           Riding West with Laura

 

 

This year the gifts will be

a clean house top to bottom

the laundry picked up

from the bathroom floor

 

a lit candle for the souls

who go and who have gone on

living or dead

without us.  And of all the small

 

things they’ve left behind,

their breathing is what I miss

most of all, how it was done

right beside us, living

 

a life.  I think or I’d like

to think (because I have

my doubts about some)

they’d be pleased at what

 

we’ve become, how we’ve

kept up on

the house and kept the kids

for the most part

 

happy as we could

make them.  We spared

the rod.  I’m glad.  I never

thought it could

 

happen.  I’m happy

it did. I’m happy it still

does.  And too, all those small repairs

along our way and if not

 

repairs, replacements: a new

fridge, roof, floor.  And those

tiles caught in their own pause

in a box, stacked 

 

and waiting to be flattened

in a pattern we don’t mind

looking at as we sit or stand

or gaze off into if the window

 

is dark.  Today, I sopped up

the trapped water under

the heat exchanger in the dryer.

Happy Anniversaries are these,

 

right?  My tiny hands on

confidence duty, assured

and humble enough to rub

or crush whatever needs to be

 

rubbed or crushed.  Taken in

or taken out. Like laundry,

I suppose.  Those whites,

the ones tumbling in the main-

 

tained dryer.  Remember when

I washed the black ink pen

in them, and now everything has

a particular age of grey

 

I don’t think they talked about

in those books, though I can’t be

sure.  Now, when they come out

of the dryer, they’ll show

 

there’s still some use in something

a little past its prime.  They can

lead a private life of wiping up

after a wash.  Clean.  Fresh. Tide

 

coming in, going out.  It might not

seem so, but everything I do,

even this, is with you.  Shouldered

and leveled, solo or

 

with the warmth of your body

close to mine.  Darkness or day.

Tumbled or just stilling, warm

and clean against our skins.