Bowls 3
(for Steve)

“You must see the world
differently,” you said. “You must—
Just then,

struck by your cupped hand
arcing the spine of my slim volume,
its chord. Your fingers, slender
as the legs of Pholcidae1 spiders,
still light on the page, resembling
grace, loosely held

filaments, silk spun like fingering
through the counters and bowls
of this score. You hold
the moment still, pulling
at this or that string, tension
in your hand balanced
by how lightly your fingers
strike chords, still.

—see poetry in everything.”

---

[1] Daddy Long Legs

Bowls II

One stacked inside the other,
I carried them to you the way
a child tight-ropes down the hall holding a cup of coffee,
white knuckled, with both hands to his mother.

and she does not mind afterwards,
getting out of bed, padding down the hall, content
and proud, with the empty dishes,
the trailed round drops of coffee, puddles of affection
she almost doesn’t want to scrub out.
The carpet is so threadbare already.

These bowls, an offering. Completely
empty except for each other.
Their ill-fit rattling, my hands
trembling like wind on still water.

Set the bowls down side by side.
Do not criticize the chips, the wear.
Imagine only
what they can hold.

Bowls

For a moment, stillness as before rain.
The kitchen holds me.
The many bowls,
filled, once, with your lukewarm soup
are lined on the counter in all their simple imperfection, waiting
to be wrapped in newsprint and stacked in boxes.
This is not an easy decision.

We threw out the peels from onions and potatoes
long ago -- such hearty food!
The eyes, cut out like so many bad metaphors,
lay crying in the garbage by the sink for days
before we knotted the bag and left it at the curb.

Now, such a fragile reminder. I’m packing gingerly.
Cleaned, dried, the chipped earthenware pieces, the unbreakable
Corning Ware with blue trim.
The kitchen walls blur.
We shift slightly and adjust
to focus, contain all this, anew:

the bowls, the room
& movement.

(Like bats, by sonar.)

Armadillo

Windshield wipers pulse,
timing traffic lights, blinking

at the armadillo in the parking lot,
far corner from Loblaw’s

huddled at the intersection, sheltered
by a lean-to of fir trees netted in green plastic

minus 27, minus 40 with the wind, the camper
rocks with each gust of eastbound traffic

(yesterday the fur of his hood frosted with breath,
I lugged the tree home and righted it, let it thaw.)

7:42 on the car dash, rushing
to school to daycare to work. he sleeps,

I imagine, under layers of wool blankets, a rustic pot-bellied
stove burning the raw sawed-off stumps of trees he’s sold,

needs to keep selling, to stay warm
through the night, keeps an ear cocked

for an approaching engine, the quick crisp footsteps
of thieves stealing trees from the lot, or he’s out

another 25 or 40, another stump of fuel, an hour’s
warmth. what furred burrowing in, what layers

of animal pelts, what woodland creature does he become
concealed in that metal-armoured shell?