[This is not an object poem, but it was inspired by Francis Ponge’s object poems and by Robert Bly’s object poems that were themselves inspired by Ponge’s object poems.]

The comforter is half-folded over with the upsweep of a snow bank against a house, if you’ll picture my wife's edge of the bed as the house.  Certainly, I am comparing a floor-plan perspective with an elevation, as it were, but you may ignore the rest of this paragraph: it may be worth your time instead to see the comforter just so.  She made the bed before she left, and I have not disturbed her side of it except to take her pillow.  She comes back Monday.  The sheets are pink, and the top one entwines with a thin, cotton blanket, the sheet’s yin swirling with the blanket’s yang.  Miles above them, the comforter’s displeasure is a perfect crescent.

I’ll make the bed Monday morning.  My simple sleep seems hardly enough to have messed up the covers to this extent, though I do sleep better with everything shoved to the side except some blanket over one leg.

Things would surprise her were she to return early.  The windows are open though the temperature is in the 80’s.  I have also saved up all of the dishes and housecleaning for Sunday.  I hope I will get it done.

When we’re in bed, my knee lies between her legs like a log dropped on top of an ebbing campfire (the elevation and floor plan again, I’m afraid), and my face is in her chest.  The comforter is full above us, and I stay under until I get too hot.  Then I lie on my back, and our dreams spire like smoke.

There are also clothes scattered around I have not picked up.  Maybe none of this would surprise her.  The man in me wants her, but the boy is a little afraid, as if I had mooned passersby through our window or had pelted them with snowballs from our roof.

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Posted July 26, 2007.