Beer Run
It was the
first balancing act I ever saw
and even though there’d be others,
lots throughout the day,
this still
makes the
river in my head pause
at
the thought-rock buried up
to
its hips in silt:
How she’d sort
each piece, socks, wash-
cloths, toddler t-shirts, all white,
all bleach
blind when they hung in
the cold February
morning,
before the hens laid, before the dog
barked,
before any of us
were up and out
of bed she was
hoisting that basket of wet whites
(the
colors were banging in the
drum) to her own
hip as though it
were one of her refusing four
children,
fists pinched like dried
Cherrios in the
breakfast bowl: at first
puffy with the blue hued-dry milk
then abandoned on the
side to ride out
the whole
day drying, shrinking into
food
that’s not
food anymore,
and how the stick of it
relaxes by supper—because the dishes
are still there—but still
hangs on, no hole
left, just
one solid stone. And those
clothes,
the basket’s tipped in the wind,
it’s February,
did I say that? And all that wash
is roped, a square from pole to
pole, as though
it were a boxing ring
and she’s inside it, though
she’s not,
not really, because the washer’s
still
bumping
and she’s let
the fire go out, and the bread’s
risen and fallen, risen and fallen,
and between the slow
pour of
the soap, the
agitate and shake
shake
shake the hell out of
everything
until it’s limp and has to be
peeled off the drum, almost, but not,
dry, there’s keys to
find, there’s kids
to put in
the car, there’s narrow
roads
to the store, and ditches
and
narrow, Jesus, head on near misses.
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