Accept no substitutes

The mundane but discretely lovely details of our daily lives

Yesterday was a good day in ink for me. I had a poem called “The mundane but discretely lovely details of our daily lives” featured in the Carrboro Free Press special “Waste” or trash issue and was listed in the TechJournal South as a technology maven — there were some pretty damn smart folks listed along with me too.

Neither of the publications are yet online although both promise to be. In the meantime, folks outside of the Carrboro area here’s the poem which some of you liked from Twitter and Facebook snippets (“Where dumpsters meet their dumptruck lovers and are raised in their arms like whales”). Thanks to the editors of both publications for liking me and the poem.

The mundane but discretely lovely details of our daily lives

The list on the refrigerator
gives all the signs of family:
peanut butter and tuna steaks,
garbage bags and red wine,
an offer to discount the mortgage.

On the sill, a reddening pepper.

The green side in shadow
with a crip dried soap bubble
breaking the reflected light
like rose cathedral windows
warming the cold grey church–
hearts welcoming in a spirit–
exotic and solid as mango seed–
sweet pulp of these days;
like a map with too many details.

Gods of a world too mundane for gods,
you blinded me. Now you amaze.

So much, so small, and so irregular–
who will sing of you?
Who will tell your particularity,
your temporary insistance,
the way the pepper sinks in the sill
when overripe, how a drop forms
then falls from the faucet?
Only those who have been too wise
for too much of our lives,
who pause before you here
and for a moment know
that one beautiful fear.

For you I will rise early
before dumpsters greet
their dump truck lovers
and are lifted in their iron arms
like passionate whales,
I will gather what is wasted,
what remains American,
and be forever true.

1 Comment

  1. Lilyn

    Wow Paul…You are indeed a multi-talented man. There’s a part of me who wants to say (and I really did try to hold this back) “Renaissance Man.” OK, I said. Next, a book – “The Life and Times of PJ.”

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