Spinning Wheel
When you melted into my home,
you brought nine stone of love
and nine tons of stuff.
More, even, than my eager heart
you filled my two-car garage.
We built shelves destined
never to contain all:
ornaments for a Yuletide forest,
pink glassware from the war,
Laura’s loom, mute cuckoo clock,
bent Easter baskets, photo albums,
uprooted family tree, antique bed
(too wide for one, too slight for two)
with no fit mattress. Yet in all
this flotsam is something of use.
Though lacking essential parts
for its intended purpose,
the old spinning wheel
still spins an unbroken thread:
a lifeline afloat on your sea
of liquid memory.