COLD COMFORT

When life on this planet seems cumbersome

and weighted with serious magnitude,

delight dragged down by deep opprobrium,

I pad into the kitchen for some food.

In front of the refrigerator, I

see tacked with tacky magnets your sweet face,

in photographs that we took last July,

and what was crushing becomes an embrace.

All the gravity of Earth seems flimsy,

its unyielding force demonstrably soft,

when refrigerator magnets’ whimsy

can anchor cheerful memories aloft.

Cold comfort may sound like a paradox,

but nourishment’s on both sides of this box.