Her Leaning Chair

It was a Sunday ritual as if she knew the way, done once, pastel performance.

For brunch she wore a T-shirt sitting down to eat the fruit and let the sunlight travel

half the morning on her legs until it near escaped the floor the room her leaning chair was in.

Her art was in not having any, her grace lay in her hands so surely weaving laughter

around the places needing binding. Gawking smile she hardly noticed as she let herself be seen,

let the scarred and punctured table piled with food and other things be humble in its role,

and be amazed that she was finally there. Guile was not a word

about her dancing eyes and I was not aware beyond the blissful sun.

This was written in 1990 as the closing poem in my first book, Shadows. The table she had her feet propped on was an oversized drafting table painted cobalt blue. I was using it for a dining room table. Being in love and on my own again, this one wrote itself.