I have been the first person awake in my house
every morning of my life
(except decades ago when the babies were babies)
and one morning on my way to make coffee
I felt like a sleeping passenger in a car
making a wide u-turn
because my life had invisibly changed direction;
I saw that in my kitchen the only things
that seemed a little alive
and whose manufacture
had not injured any living being or the earth
the only ones
were the carved wooden spoon one daughter made in camp
dimpled just as we are
the squat clay pitcher made by the other
complete with looped handle and wide enough
to pinch the sea salt from it
and the sugar bowl remaining
from my great-grandparents’ farm in the Catskills
cream-colored circled with a broad green stripe
its metal cover hinged in the middle to be folded back
as was the fashion in the mountains.
And after the turn
I stopped needing
the kitchen to greet me in the morning as a clean slate
with everything from dinner washed and put away;
now
when I pass the table to make coffee—
the morning still dark through the windows
the Shabbat glasses with red shadows at each well’s bottom
the silverware at angles alongside the salt pitcher
the empty can of seltzer on its side
and the sugar bowl
open with a few spilled grains next to the box of teas—
I’m gladdened by this pentimento
of who spoke or laughed or drank
who told the next story
or asked the question which then unspooled
our thoughts from their cupboards
within cupboards
who allowed for silence—
because arriving at the day
from this direction—
all the sweet and salt life stirred in us—
I see it will be cleared away soon enough
Jessica Greenbaum’s most recent book of poems is Spilled and Gone. She is the coeditor of the first poetry Haggadah, the Mishkan HaSeder.
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