The Other Sundays
After reading Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays
by Marcel A. Duclos

Up early        and in the kitchen
father bounces plates
on birdseye maple table
scatters silverware
drops juice glasses for seven
lards large black skillet

Salt pork slices sizzle
Scrambled eggs        heavily peppered
fry a heavy brown-yellow skin
to the weightless rhythm
of Strauss waltzes
needling the 78 vinyl–
Blue Danube his favorite–
while we children pajama in bliss

No formal church on these Sundays
Just kitchen chaos        laughing joy
a decade before the coronary



 

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