Dated Materials

She lamented the loss of her Tuesdays, always Tuesdays;
at that precise point over the ocean while she sipped juice
or flipped through a magazine, she would lose days, Tuesdays.

She understood the principle, of course (circumnavigation,
planetary spin, astronomical adjustments, yadda, yadda),
but still—those Tuesdays, floating somewhere in calendar limbo,

sunken perhaps with some old freighter in the South Pacific,
their hours plumped up with sea water, their mornings covered
in barnacles, pulsing with anemones, evenings awash in star fish.

She decided she wanted them back, life being all too short, and
wondered how one petitioned for lost Tuesdays and what she would
do when the big truck pulled up to her door and deposited the soggy mess.

Clela Reed is a long-time resident of Athens, Georgia. Her poetry has recently won awards in competitions sponsored by the Georgia Poetry Society and ByLine Magazine. Formerly an English teacher and facilitator for the gifted, she will serve as vice president of the Georgia Poetry Society in the coming year.