This week we're reprinting pieces from 110/110 (Shelf Awareness, January 4, 2010), the book that contains 110-word contributions from 110 authors, poets and graphic novelists on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of University Book Store, Seattle, Wash., which falls this Sunday, January 10. Our second excerpt is the piece by Molly Gloss, a novelist and poet who lives in Portland, Ore., whose most recent book is The Hearts of Horses.
What We Will Do On Our Last Day
We'll gather at a table, all of us,
a table laid with fragile china plates,
old silver handed down on someone's wedding day,
yellow iris in a painted vase
brought back from Mexico or France.
There will be summer salad,
tomatoes warm from someone's garden,
ice cream we've cranked by hand.
We'll raise a glass to friends already gone,
speak of books we ought to have read twice,
say again the poems that bespoke our lives.
And as the dusk begins to deepen,
the candles stuttering in their cups of beveled glass,
we'll lean in to one another, our shoulders touching,
and none of us will face the dark alone.
We'll gather at a table, all of us,
a table laid with fragile china plates,
old silver handed down on someone's wedding day,
yellow iris in a painted vase
brought back from Mexico or France.
There will be summer salad,
tomatoes warm from someone's garden,
ice cream we've cranked by hand.
We'll raise a glass to friends already gone,
speak of books we ought to have read twice,
say again the poems that bespoke our lives.
And as the dusk begins to deepen,
the candles stuttering in their cups of beveled glass,
we'll lean in to one another, our shoulders touching,
and none of us will face the dark alone.