I never noticed
this fable of the northern woods,
two pines trees on the crate
advertising
Twin Pines Milk,
Detroit, Michigan,
these things in attics,
flowerpots in garages
with last year’s dried leaves,
some sympathy for the bats
who are disappearing, too.
Good natured,
my mother-in-law
thinks that all this stuff
is a public medium,
not a medium
of weird public
privacy. She leans
over my shoulder
as I write on the computer—
reveals to me my own
selfish weirdness,
and the world’s,
with self checkout
this and so many
choices, you could laugh.
The braided Soviet horsemen
came into her village, war’s end,
and revealed the nature
of the chamber pot
by cooking cabbage in it,
and the big cabinets
by loading them with hay
and mattress stuffing
to sleep deeply in
near the village fountain,
and wristwatches by wearing
them like bangles,
and her girlhood
by pulling her up on horseback
to ride around and drop her off.