In-home-help

bless you tv
kind voice of the hearth,
electric domestic,
shooing the darkness,
lighting the lamps
against the winter -
being the lamp in fact -
against the early
night, the late
morning, the branches
strained by shrieking
wind and shrouded in
the gloom, prepared to crush
the home, but not without
the gentle protestations
of the blue-lit beauty,
cathode caretaker cheerful
at the rattling window pane.
In this love I am my mother
in this storm, swaddled
by her long-beloved
in-house help, her guardian
and friend, whose many
voices fill the ever-
widening house, and
cluck away the threats
of angry trees. She and I
and empty rooms and
endless gratitude for
you.