Another Room Poem by Phillis Levin

There is another room
You could spend time in.
What a shame not to enter
More often: walls a color

Hard to imagine, windows
Overlooking a shy garden.
From there it is easy to see
A neighbor pinning laundry,

Composing a line of forlorn
Collars and sleeves
Punctuated by buttons
Catching the afternoon sun,

Whose face was a stranger
Until their mother-of-pearl
Was torn from a bed in a reef.
Whenever a chance to return

Returns, you wonder why
You didn't sit in that sofa,
Alone or near someone
In a chair, watching

A robin abandon
The swaying branches,
Listening to rain on the roof,
Undersong of comfort,

Undersong of grief.
A lifetime could be wasted
Dreaming there, a lifetime
Wasted not dreaming there.