If you call me from work, I am the dog
asleep on the new couch where I am not
supposed to be. When you get home and ask
about my day, I am the undone laundry
in the hamper, the unwashed dishes stacked
in the sink, the television still warm
but off. I am the smell of retirement.
As you fix our dinner, your hands a blur
of vegetables and chopping, I am thunk
and thunk of knife and carrot rounds falling
in line on cutting board, the celery
set aside, waiting. If you ask for help,
I am all ears and thumbs and puzzlement,
the refugee adrift in foreign land,
the sound of retirement in the kitchen.
While you work after work, watch pots on stove
and stir, I am the bird feeders re-filled
and swaying in evening breeze and the birds.
When you talk about your day at work, sigh
a complaint, I am the roses, dahlias,
sunflowers, and sage blooming in the yard.
Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (he hopes) to enjoy. He has poems appearing or forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere.