The Cabbage

by Ruth Stone

You have rented an apartment.

You come to this enclosure with physical relief,

your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark,

the hall bulb burned out, the landlord 

of Greek extraction and possibly a fatalist.

In the apartment leaning against one wall,

your daughter's painting of a large frilled cabbage

against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars.

The eager vegetable, opening itself 

as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage

language of the meanings within meanings;

while the points of stars hide their massive

violence in the dark upper half of the painting.

You can live with this.

It sounds so easy to walk in the door, see a painting, and write a poem.  It sounds easy, but apartment living is not at all easy and the cabbages in our apartment lives do help us to "…live with this."