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Cleaning Out the Drawer


Of all the detritus in this drawer (why did I save this stuff?)
amid the paperclips, the capless pens and penless caps, 
the rubber bands, the scraps of paper with a title of a book 
that someone recommended once, the business cards, 
addresses from old envelopes, my daddy’s magnifying glass
—again I see him reading as he sat in his upholstered chair—
 there is a tape…

An old cassette... the label says it's “Prince and Leslie playing.”
Underneath the names I’d written “12” and “7.”
 Then, past the early '80s tunes they had recorded from the radio
—and so I’d never played it through, just thinking,
“Well, I’ll listen to the rest someday,”
and now that I am cleaning out the drawer
I let it play on that old tape recorder that I found
while cleaning off a shelf the other day—
I hear my children’s voices.

“I’m thinking pos-tiv-ly,” the younger drawls.
“Prince is gonna…”
Crack! A cue stick hits a ball
and then more cracks as balls splay out,
and then more voices, cheering, laughing
—whose are they, and where?
Where did my children take that tape recorder?
Silly, funny boys! My boys!

Cleaning out the drawer, I find my heart
in a surprising place.


Written shortly after retiring (when I was on a tidying binge) and edited June 2018
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