Housekeeping
By Natasha Tretheway
We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw
the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs
out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.
I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,
listen for passing cars. All-day we watch
for the mail, some news from a distant place.
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Friday was just as cold as the weather reports warned us, though I didn't notice when I first went out to feed the birds, under the overhang and in direct sunlight. Kristen and I finished watching Good Omens together, and I finished my Scatterbug collection in Pokemon Go with the help of new friends made online in Mexico and Hawaii.
We had dinner with my parents, Skyped with our kids for Chanukah, then came home, watched a bit of sports, and now we're watching the third season of Staged which I only just discovered existed today because of Good Omens and I am laughing too hard to type! Maymont has both a farm and a Virginia wildlife zoo and here are some of the animals:
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