THE DINING ROOM
by: Zona Gale (1874-1938)
- LAID
the blue dishes on the table.
- The dining room was still and sunny.
- Zinnias were in a brown basket,
- The grape-fruit plant was glossy in a window.
- Skilful fingers had wrought the border of the curtain.
- My grand-mother's blue pitcher was on the side-board.
- There were chestnut leaves in the brown rag.
- Barometer and thermometer recorded miracle on the rose wall.
- Dark wood paneled and beamed us in together.
-
- As I worked with these exquisite patient familiar things
let me within.
- They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating
pulses of hurrying molecules.
- I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and self-consciousness
have advanced us.
- By what means shall we go forward now?
- Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the
slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things?
"The Dining Room" is reprinted
from The Secret Way. Zona Gale. New York: Macmillan Co.,
1921. |
MORE
POEMS BY ZONA GALE |
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