We don't pay enough attention to our appliances. Their thoughts, their feelings. We take them for granted, and when they break down, we cast them aside like...well, like broken appliances, really.

Today, that attitude ends! 

This Poetry Friday, please settle back and enjoy New Brunswick poet Sue Sinclair's strange and original "The Refrigerator" (from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada).

Then give your nearest appliance a hug.

The Refrigerator

It's life is longer
than you ever guessed;
it has travelled further
from what it knows. At night
it looks through the window
to its distant
relatives, the stars. They hum
to one another. Discuss
concepts of time
we don't understand.

When you come home
in the afternoon, it listens
to your troubles, the celibate
friend to whom you confide
everything, steadfast, the eternal
roommate whose sexless,
guileless life is comfort.

You never know how it longs
for intelligent conversation,
can't wait for you
to sleep so it can think
of something besides the lemon
hardening at the bottom
of the crisper. But it has learned
patience.

With a certain grace, a swimmer
waiting for the plunge. Solid,
rectangular, it faces the world
without regrets. It keeps
to itself, won't sleep
on the end of your bed,
but it watches. Reliable,
dependable. The habits
of an introvert: it knows when
to turn itself on and off.

Happy belated New Brunswick Day!

Yes, belated. The day was celebrated proper in these here parts on Monday, August 6, so this post is four days late. Yet Poetry Friday always falls on a Friday, so never the twain shall meet. You can't argue against the laws of time and space and provincial holidays.

Anyways, let us celebrate, however late, our lovely landscape with the work of New Brunswick poet Elizabeth Brewster and her poem "Where I Come From" (from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada).

Summertime is traditionally a time devoted to vacations, and travel. Sometimes to distant lands, sometimes down the street for a barbecue.

But what if you're having a "staycation" this year. How will you travel? Through the magic offered every Poetry Friday, of course.

And so we embark upon a new poetic vacation to take our minds to places new and strange, led by our intrepid guide M. Travis Lane and her poem "Departures" (from Reckonings).

Summertime! Outdoor dining! Juicy burgers! Vegan hot dogs! Ketchup and mustard everywhere!

Let's face it, we're in the middle of another heat wave, so let us embrace it with some eating of foods in the outdoors.

So, this Poetry Friday, a'cooking we will go with Peter Richardson's "Cloud Puffs above a Ridge-top Barbecue Grill" (from Bit Parts for Fools).

And yes, we've got beer for everyone this time. 

Well, it's summer, and the heat has not abated hereabouts. In fact, our air conditioning unit has asked for an air conditioning unit.

On days, like this, all you want to do is curl up in the dark and the cool, maybe at a movie theatre, maybe in your home equivalent, and wait the heat out.

So this Poetry Friday, let's go to the flicks, with Kay Burkman's "You & Your Late Movies" (from Champ).

You bring some beer. We've got the popcorn.