2/23/13

A Good Day
By Corey Cook


Waking to small, soft hands on your cheeks rather than the alarm
clock. Snuggling in bed with your wife and daughters under layers
and layers and layers of quilts. Taking a long, hot shower. Homemade
pancakes drenched in maple syrup made at the family sugarhouse
and omelets with salsa, sausage and cheese. No one rouses the TV

from hibernation and the phone sits silently in its rigid nest. Walking
in the woods under orbs of yellow and orange. Our oldest shuffling
through fallen leaves. The youngest picking up sticks, presenting them
to us and then discarding them for bigger sticks. Hot tea. Reading picture

book after picture book on the over stuffed couch. Making chicken pot
pie stew for dinner - the smell permeating throughout the house. Being
fed pieces of fresh bread by the youngest nestled in your lap. Getting both
girls to fall asleep easily. Dancing with your wife in the breezeway to music
coming from the fairgrounds - swathed by cold, crisp air. Ending with a poem.


- - -
Corey Cook is the author of three chapbooks: Rhododendron in a Time of War (online), What to Do with a Dying Parakeet (print), and Flock (online). His work has recently appeared in The Aurorean, Brevities, Commonthought, Nerve Cowboy, Smoky Quartz Quarterly, and many others. New work is forthcoming in The Germ and Milk Sugar. Corey lives in Vermont. Email: corey.douglas.cook@gmail.com.