Sometimes I miss the tyranny
of our old schedule:
carpools, deadlines, meetings,
the Saturday scramble to get the kids
to soccer and ballet.
The way it kept one day
from blurring into the next.

But other days, our hazy plans
become a kind of sweet cadence
we can hum along with.

Like today, just an average Wednesday,
the laundry folded, a bowl of plump grapes
on the round oak table,
the afternoon stretching ahead.

Tonight, if the peaches have softened,
we will make Jamaican Chicken,
dark chili and cumin blending with garlic,
the peel of the peach sliding off the knife
in one long, silken strip.

© by Judith Waller Carroll.
Used here with the author’s permission.