Wednesday, February 22, 2012

PRESENCE

photo: ralph murre

Presence
by Judy Roy

You came into the room, sat down to read,
unaware that I was at the desk,
puzzling over line breaks in a poem.
I am so often in this long-shared space,
I’ve morphed into a blue-jeaned sofa cushion,
a blinking photograph upon the wall,
a standard fixture in the landscape of a marriage.

Never mind. Just yesterday I failed
to see you sitting cross-legged on the floor,
repairing electronics gone awry.

Then again we speak of politics,
or grocery lists and children turning gray,
what might have been and what may lie ahead,
all sorted out inside my head
while you have gone to town
and I am knitting yet another shawl.

~ first published in Wisconsin People and Ideas