You know what I have discovered? Don’t laugh
but . . . the joy of the living room floor!
Two weeks back, moving the coffee table aside
left an expanse of freshly-turned blue rug
that beckoned: come be a child on me
and now we (Dog and I) are down here
playing with squish toys (his, not mine,
although truly everything he owns I own).

I have set up a watercoloring station
atop a local newspaper unfolded wide,
filled a plastic cup with water and brushes
and blended together the half-dozen shades
that comprise a New Mexican sky at dusk,
tumbleweeds tiny dots on the horizon
(my whale painting did not fare as well,
spreading into a seafaring Rorschach).

One day I laid on my back and listened
to guided meditations and new age music,
but have also sat with legs V’d outward,
a second mug of hot chocolate at my side,
watching halves of forgettable movies,
with predictable plots and English scenery
not thinking about who I am vs. should be
and if those people are the same (yes).

On my stomach I later read poetry aloud
to a visitor; he stoically crossed his arms
and I am not sure heard the lines about mice
blurted from my lips, nor did he join me
on the floor, nor play on the tree that fell
in the canyon. Wouldn’t anyone? I recall
that weightlessness does not belong to the
burdened. I know. I have lived there, too.

I would like to tell everyone the good idea it is
to go without furniture, how sometimes
matched living room sets (albeit comfortable)
are one of many ways we become slow adults
sliding aimlessly into cushions not unlike how
we assume college degrees, cubicles, crock-pots
and come to believe life is an arrangement
when it is in fact a nonsensical blip on the floor.