by William Aarnes
After Jane Kenyon’s “Afternoon in the House”
This morning’s news has been nothing
but reports of mean-spirited wrong
after misguided wrong—pardons, tariffs,
layoffs, threatened arrests, betrayals.
There’s no hope of a quiet day.
.
We know, though, how the world works—
our dog, who once had a whole backyard
to herself, worriedly snuggles
next to me on my reading chair.
More carefree, our Christmas cactus
seems healthy, blooming again in March,
every cladode ending in a blossom or bud.
The moving company had refused
to assume responsibility
for keeping the cactus alive on the haul
from South Carolina to Manhattan.
It was at least as old as our daughter
and way older than our dog,
so we couldn’t desert it.
We paid a graduate student
who was driving to a conference in Boston
to deliver it at the curb.
In its pot the plant is so heavy
we’d bought a special tote to lug it
through the lobby to the elevator.
It now sits in its west-facing window,
happy, a show-off content with its home.
We don’t know what it thinks of the news
but it won’t object to hearing a poem.
Nor will the dog, though for her there’s a better pick
than Roethke’s “The Meadow Mouse.”
So I’ll choose something by Kenyon,
good as this morning’s sunlight,
comforting as memories of a fenced-in yard,
healthy as the hope of enduring
whatever else is going to go wrong,
a bud of a poem flourishing out loud—
a poem about settling in,
though we worry we should move again.
William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.
