The bell-swing of her hips
When she changed balance,
From my short vantage,
Heaving the laundry basket
Then calming the fluttering lines,
Cooled by the poplar, forehead
Misted with the work.
She herself was a frontier of shades,
An expanse I couldn’t map,
Brimful of hulking cares
Whose darkenings and splotchmarks
I was blind to.
I only heard her say she was
“Full up with everything,”
And so as I was seeing, pied
From the leaf-light, task-centered,
Collecting herself and us
With a daily clipping, unclipping,
A fold and a low, “hush.”
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More About
Alex Miller
Alex Miller is a literary reviewer, arts journalist, fiction writer and poet. He is a staff writer and literary reviewer for Art*Throb Magazine in Salem, MA. His essays have also appeared in The Curator. His poetry has appeared in Thorn, Create Here, and has been set to music by the composer Justin Johns. He works as an Associate Professor of the Humanities at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, and a teacher of high school English and Rhetoric. You can find more of his writing at thirdcardinal.wordpress.com, and follow him on Twitter at @miller_jr and @thirdcardinal.