Astral Customs: A Manual

Praise the mild clerks of reality,
who take our extra birthdays at the gate,
who smell the fog—burnt sugar, molasses air—
and stamp plurality without debate.

Honour the indexers of ordinary cups,
who catalogue which cupboard takes which rim,
who note the portrait’s unexpected hands
and keep the lights low when the barometers tick, then swim.

At evening, household rituals become
the little laws that hold a loosened town:
no talking over choristers in the hallway’s breath,
no rattling the jar of saved screws by the sink.

And praise the inner guard who learns at last
that borders are an art of gentler craft—
to name the guests, to pass the bread around,
to count the mainspring’s patient torque, plain as talk.