When the telephone rang,
whether early morning or
mid-afternoon, she was the
one who answered, and took
care to sound exactly as
though she’d just woken from
napping. It colors the
sleeping child’s imagination.
I’ve said that time designs the
ornament that suits it, and
this has everything to do with
how a life gets organized for
love. Similarly, the stack of
papers disappeared from the
table before anyone could
reasonably have filed them,
but who would steal a stack of
blank forms printed on
recycled paper. But if activity
is irritation. Think of the tiny
bush bird. It isn’t coffee, it’s
tea. In the afternoon heat my
thoughts drift, I think of
friends far away, struggle to
focus on the movement of my
children away from, towards,
and upon me where I sit in a
green lawn chair, listening to
the screen door slam
upstairs.
Andy Stallings lives, teaches, and coaches cross country running at Deerfield Academy in Western Massachusetts. His first book of poems, To the Heart of the World, came out with Rescue Press in 2014, and other poems from Paradise can be found around the internet.