Poem for Tidying Up
       

We wake to things and to the worry of things
and the worry of things grows larger:

lamplight large on our bedroom wall;
a spider spun across the lamplight, the fretwork of neglect;

and the work of dust, sloughing;
the work of books, as when snow

falling on snow makes a loveliness out of its own weight.
And what do we make?

It's as if the things we collected — not on purpose,
but the things we collected simply by going on — are made heavier

by us, heavier by our holding on.

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Copyright © 2020 Laura Paul Watson All rights reserved
from Boulevard
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission