Cleaning

Today, I cleaned my apartment;

Boxes of books shipped from my past address long ago

found places on already crowded shelves,

and dust that’d hibernated

like wintery bears,

I evicted from cave-like corners.

The papers I’d meant to file

last year

the year before

last weekend

now all neatly away.

And with my feet on the coffee table I looked around

appreciating my newly steril surroundings

and then realized--

It’d been the mess with which I’d kept such good company.