Cold Stove

Cold Stove

It crouches over there, arms wrapped
around the knees drawn up against its chest,
dark and mute and staring with its one

great eye, reminding me that time has come
round again, that I am unprepared,
that I have spent my hours staring instead of

rending. You are late, it whispers, and it
knows its words have hit their mark because
it sees me frowning at it, aware, me and my

less-than-guilty-but-more-than-chagrined shrug.
It knows I’m already casting my thoughts forward
to a rushing day when my wife will

hold the ladder, when my wife will call to
me to be careful while I fit
together the long brush and churn away

the tarry residue inside its long
lung. When it speaks, its voice is sing-songy,
full of the spite of the inert mocking the indolent,

calling not just to me but to the untouched
saw out there in the barn. Aren’t you
behind your time? it says, and we are.

Don’t you need to get busy? and we do.
I think of the orange light it will spill
across the floorboards and the warmth that will

shimmer in the air in a few
onrushing weeks, but my resentment is not
cooled by the anticipation. How can

a man ever truly like an entity
that hisses out his predictable inconsistencies
like a song of vicarious celebration?

~ by S.K. Orr