Art's Triumph Poem by Jenny Kalahar

Wooden seat smoothed
into silk by decades of dresses
years of jeans
and hands helping their owners to sit or stand.
Straddled backwards, its back slats leaned on for conversations
it has a golden color like no other
except for brother chairs kept for casual company

Our rusting potbelly stove
if you poured water on its sides
would weep hot, gray tears
stipple painting the oak floorboards watergray
under those heavy, curved black feet.
In a house where beauty was discouraged
it was my only such release:
Art's triumph over substance

A knock.
The man of yearning dreams of half the town's women
here, standing in mudcake boots
with workingman hands warming, palms out
fingers up
conjuring, commanding me to meet his brown eyes.
But I resist in embarrassment
stand, and find a chore at the kitchen sink

There is talk from the stove room while I run water over pots
so I don't hear when he first steps away from the rest.
But when I do, the water shivers
aching for his hands as much as I ache for their touch

Those boots appear
one on either side of me
his toes to my heels, impossibly close.
And while the water still runs excitedly
he takes my wrist
strokes my palm
and says my name in such a way.
And at the kindness, the attention
I turn
step back to see his face near mine
and weep hot, gray, but joyful tears
that fall like artists' watercolors from a brush
stipple painting the oak floorboards watergray
under my tired, aching feet