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Len Roberts
Tilting Pagodas
Separating the darks
from the lights, a cup
of bleach
in the empty washer
first,
then filling a bit
with water
before hurling our son's
dirt-grimed socks in,
even the Perkins Coffee Maker
humming along
now that I've found the brown
filters
and green tin of Columbian
Ground,
the smell drifting out the way
it used to
those mornings you'd wake before
me and walk quietly
downstairs
to this tiled floor and blue-walled
kitchen
where the same refrigerator and same
stove gleam,
the same doorknob you'd twist
on your way out to get the morning paper,
the same blue plates with an oriental
background-
bamboo, ponds, storks, and pagodas
that seemed to slant, high on their hills,-
the ones we lined up that morning to see
they all did lean to the left,
making the two of us tilt as though our world
was out of skew
and we did what we could to right it.
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