Month: January 2019

A cold kitchen warms until
risen dust simmers
barely a breath above a bonesmooth table.
If, later, you ask the mouse he’ll

say that he’d swear that he
heard at least one wood chair
scootscrape the stone floor
over there, and that he didn’t

have the nerve to come out
after that. He’ll say that only he
can say how, for an hour every
day, your kitchen stirs time into

silence, how it kneads a dough
of what you’ve known and lets it
rest there by the stove. How it never
hurries…never worries…that you’ll

come home before it’s done. In the
paledark air of that vacant space
where a low flame’s at patient work,
your old kitchen feeds its ghosts

Cubby has provided another prompt, this time asking to finish the poem that she started like this:

A hero is born not from the laurels
Of glory but from

Here’s my effort this morning.

Who Wants to be Sung About, Anyway?

A hero is born not from the laurels
Of glory but from the dull
bloodless stories
scrawled on the walls
of ages-long labors. Stories
more boring
more slow
more common
less told.
Stories so quiet you don’t
hear them unfold.
A hero is born not from the laurels
of glory, but from prints left behind
by old boots and slippers.
A hero walks mutely through
history’s whispers.