As it ought to be
By Craig Kirchner
The carefully arranged bouquet of yellow roses
in the hand etched crystal vase gives the table
and the room a fresh spring look.
The sunny-side fried egg just beginning to brown
at the edges makes the morning that much better,
and puts me in the mood to make sauce.
The planet swirls through space
choreographed with the sun to provide
glorious new days and sunsets.
Gravity keeps us perfectly connected to it
and to each other, keeps the sauce in the
pot and the pot on the stove.
We teach our children to love, and that happiness
comes when there is no hate and fear, that we
should champion those with less and the most
vulnerable whenever possible. To win with
humility, lose graciously and to understand
that is the only way to succeed.
They grow up, we get old. They have kids.
We tell them how we taught they’re parents
to love, not hate. Our youngest granddaughter
tells us about the shooting drills at school,
and that she doesn’t remember news without
war, and children dying, politics of separation.
The sauce is perfect, full of porcinis, sweetened
with a pork tenderloin. The water is boiling.
The oldest granddaughter will be sixteen
in a month and driving. She loves pasta and her sister,
had a hat-trick yesterday with her travel team
and knows the sauce will be how it ought to be.
Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Wild Violet, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Cape Magazine, Chiron Review, Valiant Scribe, Unlikely Stories, Yellow Mama, The Argyle, The Wise Owl, Hamilton Stone Review, The Main Street Rag, and several dozen other journals.