An Ode to the Unsung Heroes of My Home

Music is anodyne, but what compares

to our rice steamer’s ‘hissing’? Oh! that sound

flies to each corner, even down the stairs,

and makes our home a curry-cooker’s ground

(evoking lunchtime dishes in one’s mind).

Glory be to our geyser. Though a thing,

it is no less than Gaia, great and kind,

who shares with everyone her thermal spring,

defrosting them in Winter’s glacial chill.

Tell me how I should hail our ceiling fan,

whose hypnic air transports me to some hill

where zephyrs blow through Junipers that span

upon its vertex. And these whitish walls

imitate laminar white waterfalls.

Now laud for windows: they amp up the dawn’s,

the dusk’s, and the eve’s beauty ten times more,

those voile-made curtains, like two lovely swans,

float in the wafting light breeze from the door.

Our living room’s a newsstand, or at best,

a kiosk full of magazines and snacks.

And oh, the English Roll-Arm is where rest

comes pouring on us when we lean our backs

upon its cushions with our eyes all glued

to the TV, and if God has a kingdom,

some glimpses of that place I’ve surely viewed

in this home where I’ve learned a lifetime’s wisdom

and felt comforted by these ‘things’ I prize—

true paragons of firmness to my eyes.