Caroline Misner

Bamboo Lampshade

It’s a pity this place doesn’t do much better,
antique motel off Highway 35, just past
the last lonely town before you reach
the hinterland and Algonquin’s brittle hills
and the expanse of verdant lakes and streams,
slopped with algae and muddy browns.

You would think the loggers and tourist
trade would be enough to fill these rooms—
fresh paint on the walls, carpets
that have seen better days and TVs
woefully out of date.
But Gideon’s Bible is still tucked
in the bowels of the bureau, barely touched.

The beds are a little spongey,
though the sheets are so clean
the bleach burns my skin;
the pillows are a little too plump
because they’re new, but that’s alright;
I’ll survive it this one night.

And on the scuffed and faded bed table,
scoured raw, stands in all improbability,
a lamp with a bamboo lampshade for a hat;
it astounds me how this structure of
bamboo, chrome and wood
could have withstood these years intact.

Perhaps it was rarely used in the bedroom
in some well-heeled home in some
well-heeled part of town;
perhaps no one ever bought it until
Mrs. Marina, innkeeper and proprietress,
rescued it for a song from some county
flea market to decorate her mortal rooms.

I must admit it’s a little creepy, being
the only patrons here, save for that elderly
couple two doors down, and old Mrs. Marina,
knitting together the threads of her business,
room by room. (The mister is not well,
but tries to help out when he can. I think
a stroke may have felled him a few years back.)

And so we sit out together, under piling clouds
and encroaching dusk, in our plastic deck
chairs on a porch rebuilt at whatever cost.
The pines and cedars are shrouded in fog,
the cars troll by and we hope one will stop
and give more business to poor Mrs. Marina;
she’s always tried so hard.

She’s scrupulously clean, dusting
the lobby herself, not a tchotchke out
of place, and she scrubs the rooms—
she’s scullery maid and cook,
and waitress and accountant;
she does everything by the book.

The dining room is tidy, fresh
flowers in every window box;
there’s authentic Russian dishes
on the menu; sour cream laden sauces
to sop up with the dark rye breads,
and dumplings in the larder
to keep the patrons fed.

The last thing we do after packing
in the morning and checking out
is flick off the light that beams
between each bamboo slat and drops
a pool of gold upon the night table,
leaving poor Mrs. Marina back in the dark.

Continue...

Greetings one and all and welcome to my brand new website! Please bear with me portrait

I work on filling its pages with news and musings. Being technologically challenged, it may take a while to work out some of the glitches and I hope to have it finished within the next few weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to browse through the archives and have a look at some of my work. I've been writing poetry ever since I could remember and I've decided to include a section of Juvenilia in the archives. Most of the poems listed there were written in my early teens and many of them are just plain awful! But a few gems do stand out and I hope you enjoy them. Also, if you would like to know more about me and the work I do, please feel free to click on "About". There I have posted a brief biography of myself. I'm not trying to be falsely modest, but I really loathe bragging about myself. I feel an author's work should stand on its own merits and where an author was born or where she lives or what she eats for breakfast are completely irrelevant.

I would also be remiss if I didn't included a big Thank You! to my oldest son, Kevin, who with a friend designed this website for me and programmed it so that even I could manage it. And another big Thank You! goes to my dear father Jan Kurz, who was in on it the whole time and provided the stunning photography behind the text of the daily poem. And another big Thank You! goes out to all the editors, publishers and fellow writers who have supported me and my work over the years and gave me a chance when I needed it, including a Journey Prize nomination and two Pushcart Prize nominations!

"...And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt."
--Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)