Poem for Tuesday and Camlann Creatives

Breakfast in Bed 

By June Billings Safford 

The ninety-nine dollar quilt

we bought for thirty-six at Macy’s,

pie-shaped patches in pastel blues,

yellows, some white, spreads before

my field of vision like a cloth garden.

Gay colored pillows prop me up

against the bedroom wall.

At nine a.m. on a Saturday morning I might

be vacuuming, doing a wash, dusting.

But my husband’s bent on crippling me with benefits.

He’s in the kitchen below filling the menu

I wrote out on an envelope. Instead

of lying in bed with some crippling disease,

I’m studying the slope of the quilt, hungry

and waiting. Made more healthy by his indulgence

I listen. On the next level I hear water running,

cabinets opening and closing, dishes clanking.

Soon a perking coffee smell starts to ply me

with more evidence that breakfast is underway.

This second story bedroom has windows

that allow for barren tree-top viewing. And snow-patched

hills break the bird’s comforter sky from being all

I see. White muslin curtains collect in folds

at the window edges, another bargain I can point to.

I hear his caloric footsteps down the hall. He enters

holding the bed tray like an offering. Soon my nose

is just inches from sustenance and frivolity. A grapefruit

half topped by cool whip and a maraschino cherry, my

vitamins tucked in a whiskey glass. He leaves with

the assurance that scrambled eggs and coffee are next

on his benevolent schedule. How clever he is to ply me

with prizes just for having chosen him.

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I had a fairly quiet Tuesday morning -- a bunch of unexciting chores and paperwork -- but it was another gorgeous day, so then we took a walk and enjoyed the park and saw the big duckling family. Then my Voyager group watched "Life Line" -- which I had remembered as being one of the very good ones, and it was, Robert Picardo at his finest. Over dinner, we saw the very end of the Nationals beating the Orioles. 

Then we watched two movies. Unfrosted is absolutely hilarious; for everyone in it who's problematic, there's someone I love, and it would be worth watching just for Amy Schumer's Marjorie Merriweather Post and for Jon Hamm. Now we're watching The Idea of You and I'm a bit ashamed but Anne Hathaway is really great in it and Fake Harry Styles is okay. Reenactors at Camlann demonstrating Medieval crafts: