Night-Table Tableaux by William Doreski

The brass-bottom lamp by the bed

casts a green light on the abstraction

you’ve become in your old age.

The telephone on its recharger

coughs up occasional messages

that crosscut the silence preferred

by objects arranged as still-lives

to rectify angles and planes.

Although you lack a motive,

you could enter this genre scene

by extending your arm to grasp

the book bound in plain red cloth.

But would the book read you the way

the lamplight does? Would pages

flutter with flirtatious phrases

that would tinkle on the old pine floor?

All so deliberate. The green light

emanates not just from the lamp

but from the will you impose

on the objects that define you.

William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2018).