The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider
(published in her 2019 book, From The Weight of Love, Negative Capability Press)
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
Starting a poem with a question immediately gets the reader/listener involved. Even if we do not answer, we want to know what evidence follows, how the speaker aims to convince us one way or the other. And Schneider goes back to her title with the poem's first line, which is another way of getting the reader/listener involved.
This poem is just 5 sentences, 2 of which are questions bookending the poem. It is also 14 lines, the traditional standard for a sonnet.
But here we have a list poem. The poet gives us a list to back up her argument that the patience of ordinary things is a kind of love. And she does so a mix of stating basic actions of ordinary things with anthropomorphizing these same nonsentient objects, which adds to the wonder is conveys.
The floor doesn't just get walked on--it receives feet and footware. Soap doesn't just dry--it does so quietly. And that last line honestly made me appreciate windows even more.
This beautiful poem is so many things at once, which is also the point of the poem. Schneider perfectly combines form and content. Her poem--a list, an American sonnet, an ode--forces us, happily, to view the ordinary in our lives in a new way.
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