LITMIR.BIZ

       Real Life, Dear Voyeur, Real Life

      Much has kept me from my task.

      October has peaked here. To look out

      the window is to lift from the chair

      in order to get closer to those

      leaves, still shining with the drop

      in temperature, radiant with colors

      too exact and pleasing to explain.

      To look out is to leave the house

      entirely, in search of a justifiable

      chore. The garlic, for example,

      must be planted, and soon,

      lest the best of our seed cloves

      shrivel away to no better than

      dust-in-a-casing right there

      in the box. And not only that:

      we are completely out of celery!

      I tell you, real life is a pull and a lure

      and a fling-back thing, a need

      and a need and a slow-motion slide

      through all sorts of partially identified

      coming-right-at-you sudden matters.

      Some of them just plain practical

      to attend to. And then, right before

      Autumn, the yard was in Summer,

      the whole out-of-doors bobbing

      or zooming—at any rate, busy.

      I hung our laundry on the line and,

      charmed by the shape and efficiencies

      of the wooden pins, was made

      nostalgic for my own first toys.