Sunday Morning

Very quiet of a Sunday morning. Wake up in a warm space, go downstairs to a warm bathroom (what a concept!) shave and perform my ablutions. Walk over to Kroger, where there's a Starbucks, get a coffee, sit there at a table, eating a bagel with cream cheese, reading a free newspaper. Light snow. Go to the laundromat and wash all the long underwear. Several of us there, early, needing clean clothes before the storm socks us in. Back at the museum I read for a while, then clean the theater for the Cirque matinee. On a smoke break outside, I see the cardboard guy collecting boxes at the furniture store, and the can guy spearing aluminum cans at the dumpster across the way. Sunday morning salvage. Open up the museum for the Cirque crowd at noon, walk back over to Kroger and get sushi for lunch, hole-up in the office during the performance, reading some essays on art from the museum library. Take a walk down deserted Main Street. High speed internet so I'm able to find an Emily poem I remember: ...but no man moved me till the tide / Went past my simple shoe / And past my apron and my belt / And past my bodice too, / And made as he would eat me up / As wholly as a dew / Upon a dandelion's sleeve / And then I started too. When the show is over I tell Pegi to go home, she's exhausted, I'll clean up and lock up, because, in truth, I can't wait to be in a deserted museum again. No traffic, the muffled sound of a train across the river in Kentucky. I'm not finding anything I don't like about this. No anxious driving in snow that obscures the verge, no sherpa antics, climbing with crampons and a full pack after dark with a headlamp, no splitting kindling when your hands are so frozen you don't even know you've cut yourself.