My son unloads the dishwasher first thing
each morning. I think of him, four hundred
miles away, as I stand on tiptoe to shelve
last night’s wine glasses, stack my mother’s
dessert plates, open the drawer beneath
the oven just deep enough for all the pots
and pans. He says for him, too, it’s a kind
of meditation, this routine he and his wife
have shaped into the contours of a shared
life, fluted and spacious as the overflowing
fruit bowl. This is what he possesses, not
Lenox or Waterford, which neither of us owns,
this man I raised, who hums as he sorts
the silverware, noticing how each spoon shines.
First appeared in Juniper Poetry Journal.
