2016Bluestone

Harvest Gold K. Irene Rieger for AB Dad liked clean lines, right angles And those brown shades popular in the 70s. He thought pastels tacky; He had no patience for what he deemed weakness, And so our house was masculine, unbending. My parents were proud of the striped sofa now consigned to my basement And the spare coffee table with its pattern of large squares-- It certainly never held mugs of warm coffee, Nor did the hexagonal casier encase a round bottle of red in my memory. My brother and I made the grooves roads for matchbox cars, And the same striped streets sliced the head of the bed. Three oak-framed pictures above the piano Reigned and restrained, Boxed prints of beige grain Descending from the window. We seldom dared stray from the staffs on the sheet music During our thirty-minute blocks of practice. The curtains were thick, striped with narrow taupe lines

To shut out the light from fading the furniture. My brother would hide behind them to pee. I found Mom’s wedding china place settings ugly, And she later admitted that she felt the same. The kobicha flowers looked dead. “I wanted to be chic, Not too loud or patterned, But now I think I like pretty things.”

Whom was she trying to impress? Her in-laws? My dad was the artist; Mom deferred to his taste. When I broke the teapot jumping rope in the house I really thought dad would have my life for it. “Geoff, she’s shaking,” Mom ventured. It was later I learned of its marvelous provenance: A Japanese dollar store. 76