March 25: Simpler Times, Ted Kooser, "A Room in the Past"

A quick poem this morning about the past.  I have been feeling nostalgia for simpler times, an easier life, when people cared about each other.  Watched out for each other.  When I felt safe and happy all the time.  You know, when President Obama was in the White House.

Saint Marty wishes everybody a happy, grace-filled day.

A Room in the Past

by:  Ted Kooser

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill

with a morning light so bright   

you can’t see beyond its windows   

into the afternoon. A kitchen   

falling through time with its things   

in their places, the dishes jingling   

up in the cupboard, the bucket   

of drinking water rippled as if

a truck had just gone past, but that truck   

was thirty years. No one’s at home   

in this room. Its counter is wiped,   

and the dishrag hangs from its nail,   

a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,   

blue aprons of rain, my grandmother   

moved through this life like a ghost,   

and when she had finished her years,   

she put them all back in their places

and wiped out the sink, turning her back   

on the rest of us, forever.