Shards    

The perfect world is all around us

but broken into pieces.

                        --from The Kabbalah

Our world has shrunk

from global wandering

to the inside

of this old house by the creek.

We sit at the gate-leg table in the den.

Its round mahogany surface

links us by eye and voice,

keeps us from touching

finger and thigh.

You say across the red-brown planks,

How long will I be imprisoned?

Who’s in charge of the circus?

Are you the person

who’s been here for fourteen hours?

I look at the table

with its swinging-gate legs

and our tea mugs on carved wood coasters:

yours sturdy white, mine fluted cream.

I picture them crashing to the floor

if your shuffling feet nudge the folding legs

and table leaves slam

down against their gate post.

I press my face against your bristly cheek

as each image skitters

across your mind

then shatters

into blue, red, green,

a kaleidoscope twist.

A crazy quilt of stained glass window,

mosaic laid with crockery shards—

new patterns you never saw before

and cannot know.

Page 3

© Copyright, Patricia Wellingham-Jones.
All Rights Reserved.