TUESDAY POEM (on a Thursday?) | THINGS by Lisel Mueller

                                       

detail from Today, a painted response to Kay MacKenzie-Cooke's poem Life's Work  |  CB 2013

                                       THINGS 

                                       What happened is, we grew lonely

                                       living among the things,

                                       so we gave the clock a face,

                                       the chair a back,

                                       the table four stout legs

                                       which will never suffer fatigue.

                                       We fitted our shoes with tongues

                                       as smooth as our own

                                       and hung tongues inside bells

                                       so we could listen

                                       to their emotional language,

                                       and because we loved graceful profiles

                                       the pitcher received a lip,

                                       the bottle a long, slender neck.

                                       Even what was beyond us

                                       was recast in our image;

                                       we gave the country a heart,

                                       the storm an eye,

                                       the cave a mouth

                                       so we could pass into safety.

                                       Lisel Mueller

(Thank you, Louisey)

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Jennifer Compton.

Jen has written a marvellous commentary to accompany A Garage

by Australian poet, Robert Gray

                                        ". . . The sun had cut a blaze

                                        off the day. The petrol pump

                                        was from the sixties— 

                                        of human scale
                                        and humanoid appearance
                                        it had a presence,

                                        seemed the attendant
                                        of our adventures on the road,
                                        the doorman of our chances. . . "