The Cup


Unable to quell a sudden urge for neatness,
I reached to put away my Summerhouse cup,
lifting up a wire shelf insert by mistake, 
rolling a whole stack of china toward me, 
barefoot in my nightgown on a step stool,
dropping the precious cup, which smashed
as I pushed both my hands to save the rest
—and did. 
       I tried not to make too much
of the one I’d never lift to my lips,
throwing the pieces out immediately.

       It’s only a cup,
      You saved the rest.

Oh yes, I did, but just as in a classroom 
where all the pupils quietly work but one who refuses,
my mind roves to an unlearning I mourn 
even as I see the stacks
of all that has been accomplished—and saved.
Why couldn’t I have just had breakfast
before I started my tasks?

Because he was a flushed and violent boy
I had not thought of in twenty years
until his mother wrote me he had died,
not saying the cause,
and I cannot say the boy was the cause of my urge,    
a sweaty boy caught hanging the shorter kids
up by their collars on the high coatroom hooks
and whose ruddy face looked so little like porcelain.


​Reprinted from The Second Blush: Poems by Molly Peacock. Copyright © 2008 by Molly Peacock. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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