2 March 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 1
Mr. Rogers
From green and brown carpets
constellating the globe, we focused vacuous eyes
and rounded mouths. Once more
the door smiled him in, and again we were
unexpected. Wooden paneling, a sail
puffed in a picture, and hangers evenly spaced
were fingers crossed behind our mutual back.
No matter where we lived we were Neighbor.
It was easy to take a breath and change.
The cardigan climbed onto his sloped shoulders
like a five-year-old as the couch sat
where it was supposed to sit.
His dark, slick hair could be parted,
we knew, along no other line. Shoes
(tidier than the torn canvas in which we planted
ourselves every morning) panted for his hands
to find them, to snug a bowknot
and our faith. When he greeted his fish
with four quick shakes (ours all dead
from being salted like French fries),
we felt a lens of interest would follow us
to wherever we ended up, a promise
to whomever. Pleasant inquiries
would lace the silence between the children
we were bound to find in each other and our lives
would be answered in time
by the same design, serene arrival
in the escaping question marks of Make Believe.
About the author:
Derek Sheffield won the North American Review's 2003 James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. His poems have recently appeared in the online journals Literary Salt and the Salt River Review, and in the Bellingham Review and the Crab Creek Review. His interview of William Stafford's family is in the Spring 2003 issue of the Seattle Review. Blue Begonia Press published his chapbook, A Mouthpiece of Thumbs, in 2000. He can be reached at dereksheffield@hotmail.com.
For further reading:
Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 3, No. 1, where "Mr. Rogers" ran on March 2, 2003. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
