Sunday Poem

Lint

Beneath the brushed wing of the mallard
an awkward loveliness

Under the cedar lid a mirror
and a box in a box

Blue is all around
like an overturned bowl.

What to do with this noise
and persistent lint.

the larder filled past caring?
How good to revolve

on the edge of a system
small, unimaginable, cold.
.

by Rita Dove
from To Read a Poem
Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1992
.