Daily poem, August 29, 2009

Here's today's poem. I'll try to get more cheerful, I promise.


For the Commercial Trade

I have an oddly shaped cabbage in my fridge,
like a pine cone from a spruce, long and green,
or a slender version of the Pineapple of Welcome
painted on pottery for commercial trade in Portugal and Italy.

I have a headache
like a pine cone from a spruce tree, long and green,
or a slender version of the fist that found my lip
and split it, the August I was twenty-three.

I have buttons on my shirt, white and neat,
like a line of little stones a child might string along a storm-washed beach,
or the pretty needle teeth a tabby kitten shows you
when she yawns widely before curling up to sleep.

I have a picture of my mother, seventeen, her eyes smiling, slender, green,
like she was just as happy as she seemed,
or like the time between when she’d forgotten
the last loved one who left her and didn't know the one about to leave.