Tuesday Poem: From The Notebook

 

Cinderella's Daughter

Nights, when the servants were

deeply asleep, my mother

traded her lace for homespun,

her crown safely

back in its lock box,

my father abed  and dreaming,

adrift on the ship of state.

I watched her in secret

as she danced with the broom,

bent and crooned to the dustpan,

fondled the stiff little bristles

on the idle head of the scrub brush.

Work called to her, it was

her secret, her benediction,

kneeling in the ashes,

sweeping the hearth

cleaner than it sometimes

already was, scrubbing

the stones in the hallways

till they sang a hushed

song of gratitude

beneath our feet.

All of life's ugly voices

gradually silenced by her hands,

rosy from running water,

dancing over every surface,

making me a tapestry

that told the complicated

story of her entry into Paradise.

Tuesday Poem: an earlier version published in BlueFifth Review in 2007

  

First Sonnet

When the family crowded into the Summer Street kitchen

I was all hers for a while: belting out God Bless America,

cheeks aglow, loud as Kate Smith on the Ed Sullivan show,

or the special birthday song we learned from Big John and Sparky

on the little Bakelite radio. Tucked tight within her arms I basked

in her smile, the cloud of her powder scent and smoky breath,

what I’d later know to be bliss, afloat on the feel of her lips

on my cheek, her drawn out kiss, as the aunts and uncles laughed

and clapped for us both. Most of the time it was more like

I was a mouse, eclipsed by the whirr and squeak of the clothesline,

the whish whish whish of the scrub brush in her fist, a pest,

a maker of dirt underfoot, scuttling around the house, furtive

and filthy as soot: watching her from the corners, struggle against

the enormity of her unhappiness, and the awful swelling of the mess.