Desertion

Desertion


By Jacquelyn Pope

Summer's stock is steam
and rows repeating:
pickle, pudding, jam,
the ribs of stairs,
porch white as a wedding.

Home is half habit:
stacks of salt, a measure of milk
whisked, wiped and soured.
Days come notched in quarter-hours

and hope, scant as sleep,
goes slippered down the hall.
Home is silt and settling,
a ring, a rose, a reason.

Adrift with the day’s dust,
heat insisting on a cast-
iron cure. The door opens
on dark advice, swings
on a severed string of chance.

This poem originally appeared in Huffington, in the iTunes App store.

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