Despite losing the dining table to it
for weeks, our family stays
with the puzzle, teetering plates
upon knees before the television
and then returning to the soft symphony
of shifting the oneness of a cardboard shape
into the satisfied oneness of another,
over and over, the thousand little clicks
of pleasure:--More than that
if you count how, from time to time,
someone will recognize the need
to undo what we took for perfection
but what, in fact, was silently stalling
the possibility of seeing the thing
through, until someone else
or that same someone plucks out
the problem piece, resetting the bell
for an actual perfect--: Family, isn't this
what we're after? no one says, all hunched
and humming above the unfinished quiet
that buoys our separate, shared work.
