Poetry About Manners

In a chair pulled back for a guest, manners finds a visible shape. A thank-you note beside the flowers carries what ordinary speech leaves unfinished. Between voices lowering in the crowded train and bread passed before a hand reaches, the heart learns to listen. Courtesy makes room for another person without making anyone smaller, though the day rarely says so aloud. By night, an apology offered without excuse becomes a promise rather than an ending.

A thank-you note beside the flowers enters the poem first. Manners follows, neither symbol nor explanation, but weather. Bread passed before a hand reaches keeps the difficult measure. We stand near a chair pulled back for a guest and let certainty loosen. Courtesy makes room for another person without making anyone smaller. An apology offered without excuse remains after the room grows quiet.

Someone remembers voices lowering in the crowded train. Someone else names a chair pulled back for a guest and means an entire life. Manners moves between them with patient hands. A thank-you note beside the flowers refuses to become only background. Courtesy makes room for another person without making anyone smaller. At last, an apology offered without excuse gives the silence somewhere to rest.