Saturday, February 24, 2007

Family Couch Poem

Family Couch

How often did I labor
On those steel straps?
Already over half a century
Old, eyelet screws broken
Shanks embedded in hard wood
Like an unrecovered bullet.

Mostly, it was someone
Too large or too many
When a spring sprung
Or a bolt snapped
For the last umpteenth time
To get on my knees.

Resetting the couch straps;
A quarter inch finds another
Striped hole dad beat a nail into
Long ago. The other direction
Shows a shank
Like a do not enter sign.
I go higher or lower
And such fixed folly
Is hidden by a n old Admiral
TV box then cushions.

When we moved no one
Wanted the couch. Arm
Chewed by a dog to much
Falling apart to analyze by section
Thrown and crushed at a transfer
Station- those straps unyielding
As the cushions ripped asunder.

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