The House Rhapsody

For the difficulty of dinner tables,
or to figure out how things work, the family
is sitting in a circle
on the floor.

They bend, as bodies bend
into the catalogue of the room,
or the room floating up around them.

The family is standing
in various entrances. The family is sitting.
"I wasn't thinking of anything

specific," they say, each facing the room
from one of the various
entrances. The difficulty,

and what do we have to say about it,
and what do we have to show for it
around the dinner table,

or the sound like a dinner table. Each with a place
and no memory. "Let us rise
to the invitation of the room," they say.

They say, "Can you relax this once,
from the cheap seats." The lights
and the distance through evening.

It's there in everybody, somewhere,
the family says. The table of wood
and the room in orange.

The silverware floating past. The caught glimpses
of napkins. And look how calm we are.
Look at our beauty.

Copyright © 2009 John Gallaher All rights reserved
from Crazyhorse
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission