Geography: A Poem by Mark Wright (copyright 2011)

Geography

There was a time when

the world turned at my touch.

A desk lamp

and a good spin made day

turn to night

and back to day again

over the Fiji Islands,

where surely

there were better things

to do after school than

algebra.

In my desk drawer, I kept

a small plastic bag of rubble

that was supposedly from

the Berlin Wall.

But on my desk top, Germany

was still divided.

The Soviets still ruled

the Bloc,

and Czechs and Slovaks

were mashed together

in tiny print just above

Hungary.

Rand McNally should have

offered a refund when names

changed

and boundaries

shifted.

But, then, I wouldn’t have known

what to do with a new world

any more than Columbus

did when he sailed

the wrong way

to Asia.

Back then, I could cross

the Atlantic in a split

second.

And Greece was just

a fingernail’s length from

the tip

of Italy’s boot.

And I didn’t spend my days

wondering what the night

was like

where you are.  

Ruts: A Poem by Mark Wright (copyright 2011)

 Ruts

I never sit in the old rocking chair

in the corner of my master bedroom.

The wooden seat (where I’m told Mom rocked me as a baby)

is rigid and painted a semi-glossy black.

The back support is composed of narrow spindles

like the spokes of a wheel that won’t turn.

The rails have dug

semi-permanent ruts

into the mauve carpet.

And the chair gives off something

of a moldy musk on rainy mornings

when the damp air seeps in from around the patio door.

I do find the rocker is a suitable place

for stacking laundry.

I pull clean clothes from the dryer and toss them

on the rocking chair.

I wait until it’s piled high before I decide

it’s time to fold the heap of clothes.

When the floor gets cluttered,

I often set a magazine, playbill or football program

on the chair

for a short while

before discarding

the mostly-unread items in the trash.

After college, I furnished my first apartment

with all the things Dad and his new wife said they didn’t need.

Their charitable contributions included

(among other things)

the rocking chair

and a box filled with old photo albums

chronicling my parents’ wedding and the years before

and just after my birth.

The box collects dust in a closet

and conceals a Polaroid of Mom struggling

to pry a Frisbee from the taut jaws of a black lab

that died in 1987.

I try to keep the chair looking presentable (for the rare visitor)

by wiping it down

with a wet rag now and then.

But I cannot completely erase

the thin ring of dust around each narrow spindle.

-- Mark Wright