I know.. weird photo…I just like it.  I took it to accompany a poem I was planning to put on Youtube along with an oral reading of the below poem from my soon-to-be published book, If I Were Water and You Were Air. I am reconsidering even doing the audio posting of poems on youtube, so will make use of it here and include the poem as an explanation of the photo.

Long Weekend

Her shoes on the floor next to the pot-bellied stove
do not have holes in them, as her father said,
but rather triangles and rectangles
and everyone is wearing them
laced up to below the ankle.
Her friend Marjorie, who has lots of shoes,
has pink ones
and Sheryl has a white pair
and even my new stepdaughter’s real mother
has shoes like this.

Her used Band-Aid lies in fetal position
on the new white sofa cushion,
her hair twister on the kitchen counter
along with a handful of pens she grabbed from my desk
and then abandoned.
Her clothes, like crumbs of her,
lie scattered down the hall.

She is asleep in the loft of my study,
in the nest she has chosen
for a place to stash herself, along
with those collected objects of my past
that have captured her fancy as she helped
with our unpacking of boxes.
With them, she has created a little world within our world:
a painted blown egg from the Tucson street fair,
assorted brushes and antique hair rollers,
hair combs I bought in Peking, African baskets to put them in,
a beach chair, a sheepskin rug, and her stuffed dog.

Stealing into my study to find paper and my one remaining pen,
I hear her gentle snores from the high space
at the top of the ladder on the wall behind my desk.
My new daughter––with us for our first weekend
as we open boxes in our new house.

The bouquet of wildflowers on the bookcase––
California poppies, creeping Jenny, sprays of honeysuckle––
she has learned all their names, along with moss roses, aloe vera and lobelia,
collecting them in her sorties out to the deck
to scare away the jays, feed peanuts to the squirrels.

She loves this house and wanted to unpack one more box
before bedtime––my bathroom box that held handy hair rubbers
and the tiny Chinese combs––both of them speedily added to her purloined collection.

She calls me Mom, her knee sticking through her Christmas tights.
She is a girl I can’t keep together––
already a hole in the turquoise top we bought together yesterday––
four tops, four pairs of tights
and a pink jacket.
Socks, next visit.

When she leaves to go back home, I plant dahlias and purple salvia.
I find the hidden box of toothbrush, toothpaste, and acne medicine
she has secreted in her loft above as though staking her claim.
I find cups to put them in,
put them on the counter in the bathroom next to ours.

For Cellpic Sunday