Introduction by Ted Kooser: Here's a celebration of one day in the week, the kids with the father, a brownie for breakfast, everything right with the world. January O’Neil lives in Massachusetts, and this poem first appeared in RATTLE. Her most recent book is Misery Islands (Cavankerry Press, 2014).

Sunday

You are the start of the week

or the end of it, and according

to The Beatles you creep in

like a nun. You're the second

full day the kids have been

away with their father, the second

full day of an empty house.

Sunday, I've missed you. I've been

sitting in the backyard with a glass

of Pinot waiting for your arrival.

Did you know the first Sweet 100s

are turning red in the garden,

but the lettuce has grown

too bitter to eat. I am looking

up at the bluest sky I have ever seen,

cerulean blue, a heaven sky

no one would believe I was under.

You are my witness. No day

is promised. You are absolution.

You are my unwritten to-do list,

my dishes in the sink, my brownie

breakfast, my braless day.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by January O'Neil, “Sunday,” from Rattle, (No. 41, Fall 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of January O'Neil and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.