Upstairs Room

after a quarter century
after all the mornings, evenings,
cups of coffee drained to the
bitter end, after the orange
rinds tossed into the trash,
after all the sitting in waiting
rooms, over-bright, the furthest
from soothing the shattered soul,
with their tattered periodicals
and chain-hotel decor, the gray
plastic table, hard-edged as
the knives slicing your inner organs
for a late supper

still, after a quarter century,
watching the light come, after
the dark, searching out the
moon we both see

after all has been said and
done, and done to death and
approached from every tired
angle, ever finding new
geometries to fit those passions,
ungoverned, that plague one,
even so--there can be some
rest in the eyes of others, the
sure-handed repetition of
domestic tasks

after twenty-five turnings of the
summer into fall, after the
strands have turned to silver,
the movement of Christmas to
Easter, the self-sacrifice, too,
love lost (or folded into a tiny
paper square, hidden away in
an upstairs room)

and those so many lives she
thinks on, breakfasting, squabbling,
merging and diverging, the
addition and multiplication
self-taught, no less important
than those numbers, learned
by rote
we chanted out as sun streamed through the
woodframed squares of windowpane

and she will sing a new
song, and again, a new
song, before the day
is done