Simple Things for an Ending

It is the simple things we miss when it comes to an ending,
the conversations in car rides,
the questions and answers at dinner,
the homework done with blunt pencils,
the daily news shared at the table,
the laughs at slapstick comedies,
the injuries cleaned and cared for,
the stuffed animals treated by the vet,
the tea parties set for me and the cat,
the sword duels to save the castle,
the bicycle rides in circles,
the baby dolls put to sleep in beds,
the bouncing balls tossed over fences,
the games of chess played to draws,
the trips to the park swings and slides,
the Olympic races to my apartment door, 
the stories read and dreamed on toilet bowls,
the characters sketched in marble journals,
the scribbled lines on looseleaf paper,
the names written letter by letter by practicing hands.
I think of these simple things and so much more,
when things come to abrupt, complicated ends.

Clothes on Folding Tables

Folding tables set up in a yard of mud.
Out of the dark church come the clothes.
We set up pallets of grey blankets for the poor.
The hands sort though the clothes on the table.
They carry shopping carts, lined by garbage bags.
They tell their stories with their searching eyes.
Eyes ahead on tables overflowing with clothes.
They all wear used hand-me-downs and dirty sweaters.
Fingers handling onesies and footsy pajamas and jelly sandals.
A sweatshirt with construction gear, trucks and hard hats, screws and bolts
gets folded and pushed down into the cart.
A white button up stays untouched with a sweet potato stain.
A pair of weathered blue sweats has a hole in the knee.
The people walk through the lines to get some second-hand stuff.
Their hands sort through the worn, used clothes.
Thousands of clothes there on folding tables.
The fingers touch and take what they please.
Into the night they come and look and sort.
Thousands of things worn here in a churchyard.
Feet walking through the mud.
All to get some used clothes,
folded on tables for the taking.

Bottle and Chair

The alcove is so dark and spacious.
There is room in the black for much.
A bottle and chair cast shadows over vortices.
My chair is skeletal in structure,
a gaunt figure, standing in light
against the curve of a charcoal wall.
The bottle is stout and stubby.
Its cork is open and missing.
It is rotund in the middle, massive.
They stand in contrast.
A chair Giacommetti.
A bottle Gangantua.
And the floor is bathed in spectral white, 
with scribbled lines supporting the stairs.