continue

In my dye kitchen it’s the summer of ochre.

Sometimes when I’m driving for groceries,

or coffee, or the dentist, I manage

to look away from the billboards and the

strip mall signs, and off into the hills.

The yellow there doesn’t scream for my

attention or my money, it just promises quiet

and declares that life is sweet even if,

or maybe because, the grass fades quickly

back into soil. In the studio, I mix soil colors,

soft pale browns, into the bright yellow dye.

As if I’m mixing desert weeds and sunlight.

I would like to write about anything but

my current troubles. Turn my back on

the irritation of the moment and look toward

the tree out my window,

the way the light comes through the leaves,

the way the colors suggest the next design.

Blue for the sky beyond the branches.

Gentle for the way we are held by the earth.

It used to be a point of honor that we

split the household tasks. Now I cook

and wash the dishes, both jobs, no complaints.

I guess in the face of raw survival,

the power struggles finally just evaporate.

Eggplant pasta tonight. You got some of it down.

Colander, pasta pot, forks, some things

in this house are still in order, still functioning

as promised. Is this our program now?

Keep going until your system fails?

I like this dress. It lets me imagine

I am living a hundred years ago,

before our current worries existed.

All of them made it, or didn’t, one way or another.

What I mean is, our ancestors know

the end of their story now.