Everything gets scrubbed with an old towel
torn in two, then soaked in water and soap
and bleach: baseboards, the kitchen walls,
the stone tile backsplash behind the stove.
Then bulbs are replaced in light fixtures,
the closets emptied of clothes that have
outgrown their use or usefulness.
Someone mentions that this furious
cleaning at the start of the year
has reference in the Bible, but I have
no memory of what chapter or verse. All
I know is the old soul wants to slip
away from its old moorings and into
a clean new outfit that smells of laundry
on the line. Thinned of last year’s flaking
whitewash and scoured of any traces of mold,
it wants to travel abroad and check itself
into a little hotel in a country it’s never
been to, slide the key card in the door
of a room where the sheets have been
turned down just so, and fluffy towels
wait on the rack. There are two perfect
chocolate bonbons laid out in welcome on
the pillow; and outside, the whole city waits
to be explored by morning’s first light.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Landscape, in the Aftermath of Flood
- A Carol
- Little Winter Song
- Because it is years since I last saw you
- Landscape, with Remnants of a Tale
- En Crépinette
- Luces
- Clearing
- Postscript
- Animus
- Improvisation
- New
- My mother turns 78 and texts
- [poem temporarily removed by author]
- [post temporarily removed by author]
- Dark Body
- Oír
- Rezar
- Inflorescence
- Midpoint
- Chalk Circle
- Oracle
- Mermaids
- Tarot: False Spring
- Making Dinner, I Hear Rostropovich on the Radio
- Field Notes
- Aragonaise
- Road Trip, ca. 1980
- Gold Study
- Triptych
- Marker
- Serif
- Compline
- Ghazal Par Amour
- White List
- Dear noisy stream gurgling in the distance,
- Between
- First, Blood
- Aura
- Mirador
- Rock, Paper, Scissors
- Interrogations
- Thread and Surface
- Maquette
- Legacy
- Diorama, with Mountain City and Fog
- Preparing the Balikbayan Box
- The Jewel in the Fruit
- Lumen
- Landscape, with Geese; and Later, Falling Snow
- Illusion
- Landscape, with Threads of Conversation
- Chroma
- First One, Then the Other
- Apostrophe
- Provision
- To Silence
- Morning, Cape Town
- Empty Ghazal
- High in the hills, the dead
- Practice
- Besame,
- Index
- Augury
- Dear unseen one,
- Bindings
- Saturday Afternoon at the Y
- Dear Epictetus, this is to you attributed:
- How have I failed to notice until now
- Cusp
- Field Note
- Dear shadow,