Poem of the Week, by Sharon Olds

Little Things

- Sharon Olds

After she’s gone to camp, in the early

evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes

from the rosewood table, and find a small

crystallized pool of maple syrup, the

grains standing there, round, in the night. I

rub it with my fingertip

as if I could read it, this raised dot of

amber sugar, and this time

when I think of my father, I wonder why

I think of my father, of the beautiful blood-red

glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a

broken-open coal. I think I learned to

love the little things about him

because of all the big things

I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.

So when I fix on this tiny image of resin

or sweep together with the heel of my hand a

pile of my son’s sunburn peels like

insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,

I am doing something I learned early to do, I am

paying attention to small beauties,

whatever I have -

as if it were our duty to

find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

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For more information about Sharon Olds, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sharon-olds/

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