Coaling the Furnace

Am I such a romantic to believe
that the coaling of the furnace
was a job my parents enjoyed sharing
before it was exchanged for oil?
They seemed to have a rhythmic shoveling
knew the coal hours burn-time
took turns descending to the dank basement.
My mother didn’t want me to spend time
there in the dark musty dirty depth of the house,
would come check on me if she thought I’d
stayed down too long. What was I doing
in this mysterious area lit only with a dangling bulb?
Mom wanted to protect my curiosity from harm.
I wanted to unravel the secrets of boxed memories.
Loving warm coals cooled to remembered embers.

Clean Canvas

My house has interactive art.
Pieces that I have placed change arrangement every two weeks.
She re-moves the boredom of the job she has to do
the job I don’t want to do, now don’t have to do

I hope she notices that I keep her creativity until her next visit
when she is inspired to move the paint brushes to a new order
the rocks in the bathroom to other rocking positions
the knit bag of sage jumps up top the quartz splash
the towel postures itself on the right this time

dining baskets, basil, and squash in a row on the table
Italian sculpture and tins balanced on the server
painting abstract pictures with her duster.
She has an eye.

Dianne L Knox is a poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula in the small town of Sequim (skwim). Dianne is a marketinggraduate of the University of Iowa, worked for a defense communications corporation in Business Development, owned a small business, practices and taught Tai Chi, and is a rabid reader, listener, observer. Knox has been published in several anthologies, Cirque Literary Review, Tidepools Literary Magazine, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center Poetry in the Park, Poetry Corners Bainbridge Island Press, Avalanches in Poetry III, Inspired by Art, Blue Whole Gallery, and her book, Red Hot Pepper.

Image: James St. John, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons