The Second Law

The things that lie still,

An opened thermos, filled with water and funk, left on a shelf above the kitchen sink,

A boy’s sized 7-8, red puffy jacket hanging in the back of Finny’s closet, stained black on the front by campfire soot and roasted marshmallows,

My brown-feathered fascinator tucked safely away from cats, on the second glass tier on my tabletop curio,

Lost and found abalone shells, kakui nuts, starfish and sandstone slabs in a utility closet, packed hastily from a science classroom into a brown paper bag at the end of a wild, all-consuming school year,

Coalescing over days, weeks and years, 

a three millimeter wall of particulates, 

from a weedwacker blade, 

spun upwards from our neighbor’s essential trimmings, 

the organic combines with the inorganic, 

layers of dust we track home wearily from our workplaces,

The not so little anymore boy, 

twenty years now old, 

tucked tightly into the crux of a blue-upholstered department store sectional, 

legs-outstretched, long handsome toes poking through holes in a white, roped, cottony blanket, absorbing shrieks and gasps from a caffeinated world cup commentator, 

All this stillness is in stark contrast; 

To the neverending warbles of the washing machine, 

resonating from another corner in the house, 

jeans and jumpsuits undulating in a centrifuge with suds and silky water, their swirlings, swishings and throngs of buttons and zippers against the walls of a metal cylinder, 

counter the stillness of the inanimate objects, 

shaking them awake and spoiling their negative entropy. 

This jostling, along with the spewing of backpacking equipment from a Rubbermaid container, 

myriad microstates assumed by drink glasses and coffee mugs, 

blue berries escaping green compost bags onto the kitchen floor,

the cats being captured from across the street bushes and discovered on long walks past the Berkeley Animal shelter diving for flies and rolling about on pouches of catnip on the carpet,

the discarded exercise equipment and rolling office chairs; 

reclaimed bedroom territories by a college student,

In this house,

while the forgotten and looked past will stand to test it;

chaos always ensues,

and the second law prevails.