Life In Lowercase Poem by Frank Avon

Life is a sitting room -
a sofa and a couple of chairs,
a coffee table and coffee table books,
two lamp tables, a Lincoln rocker,
a library table with a Tiffany lamp,
a writing desk, an antique cabinet
concealing a television set,
hand-tooled ceramics, hand-woven baskets,
an easel with a portrait of
one's great-great-grandparents,
frowning as they always did
from the landing in the staircase
while children slid down the banister,
large paintings - abstract, impressionistic,
oh, and one traditional, roses in a still life,
lifting one's eyes to the skylight,
or the bay window looking out on one's world
and other, more mundane worlds,
impinging on what should be
one's own inner space.

Life is a sitting room.
To guests it is a parlor
with a leather divan and antique oak;
to family it is a great room
with generations of artifacts;
to oneself it is a living room
where one never lives
but maintains order and a face
to meet the faces that one meets.

Life is a sitting room,
but living is not sitting:
it's pacing, jogging, standing
around, occasionally lounging,
working at a desk, in the dirt,
it's pumpin' and humpin' and
just holding on tight, all day
and all night, it's waiting
in the wings and dancing without
strings, and hills you can't climb.
It's 'root hog or die, ' reminiscing,
staring at the stars, improvising,
imagining, projecting, giggling.
Never sitting. Never, never just sitting.

Life is a sitting room,
but not living.
Life is an abstract noun,
nothing you can grab on to;
living is an active verb,
a gerund, a participle.

Don't write about my life.
It never is nor wasn't.
Write about me living.
Write about my living.
Write about living.
Live as I have lived.
That is living abundantly,
and that is living eternal.

Living is a kitchen.