My Shirt

Holding It Together

Running Away From Home

Time Stopped, Cat Leaving

Racines Adventives, Atlas

Tortoise With Head Held back

Ginger in A Bowl

After Reading, “Miracle Fair” but Wislawa Szymborska

This year I like poems that are lists.

Yesterday I was bored so I took a bunch of pictures of things in my house. This shirt for one. It was one of Charlie’s. He was very hard to buy presents for so I resorted to T-shirts from places we visited. This is a nice rayon shirt with batik fish. It is not a quiet shirt.

I have been setting the camera on the kitchen counter and taking pictures of what is there with a little staging. It changes every day.

Yesterday there was a peach that I had cut in half. The shot from above wasn’t satisfying so I leaned it against a bowl so the beautiful orange and red flesh glowed in the middle. There is a bowl of dark plums behind it and in the distance my tea kettle and coffee grinder. The cabinet roof looms over everything looking very industrial. And a corner of the spice rack shows in the top left. Out of focus. Deleted. Not all the pictures made the cut.

An aerial shot of a small drawer full of paper clips and binder clips and a round container and some white wire bag ties and some string.

A picture of a picture with a little tray of gravel and a salt and pepper shaker set that is a blue car pulling a white trailer. I made that up to look like the car and trailer were going through the scene of the picture. It didn’t work very well. There are also S&P shakers in the form of cactus.

My cat Ginger through the bars of the chair-back. She is sitting in a large bowl that used to be on the table with my sun hats. I couldn’t keep her off the table as long as the bowl was asking her to fill it. Now the bowl is on the chair with a towel in it. Bert, the other cat is sleeping on another piece of furniture that has been surrendered to the cats. He has to be near a window. He is a window addict like I am a solitaire addict. He watches things move out there. I wish he wouldn’t kill them if I gave him the chance.

The water stains in my dining room ceiling. I am taking pictures of them periodically to diagnose what is causing them. It could be rain, it could also be the bathtub is leaking.

My going away  clock from when I ‘retired’ from BBI, the construction firm where I worked for many years. It’s in a brass  and glass box and the battery wore out years ago. There is a wooden cat climbing down off of it.

All my shopping bags that are in temporary retirement because of the plague. And two melons that Karen, my part-time roommate bought at TJ’s on Saturday.

An extension cord laying helplessly on a mahogany dresser in the dining room.

A face mask laying on the table. It made me laugh because it looks like a pure white tortoise with its head and feet pulled in.

My bookcase with lamp and pictures. It’s a pretty alcove of warmth in the living room.