Cleaning Up: Room One

Cleaning Up

There is a hush now while the hills rise…

and God is going to sleep.

                        “Fishing in the Keep of Silence”

                        Linda Gregg

(There’s that word again: Keep.  Castle Keep?  Own?  Put Up?

I saw it yesterday when I was thinking

about you.)

Room One:

Though there are no hills, none

to speak of anyway.  Just the slow

slope up the long dark

driveway and the pause of a car shifted

into park—then the idle

engine—then the quiet

tick of it all

cooling down.  And nobody

is home.  So.

It’s her own

mop and bucket, her own

Pine-Sol and bleach, it’s her own

rag and polish and vacuum.

It’s a couple of trips back and forth and she leaves them

on the porch

because it all starts

at the unlocked door:

ü  the flipped and sand-caked hip-

rubber boots.  And lifting them everything slips

off as though it’s all a table-cloth not

on the table all the way.

ü  the tipped and broken

geranium leaves and pink

blossoms all chaotic

confetti

ü  broken, but once saved and whole,

clam and mussel

shells, sharp shards and one

or two under her always

ungloved thumb nail (two weeks working

their way out and her friend

will be in rehab then)

ü  the half done load

of whites, really just three

pieces, a full drum

of grey water, greasy, long popped

soap bubbles floating above

the faded flannel (it’s been

a cool June) night-

gowns, hem long walks frayed.

And this all this in the little room just inside

the front door.  It’s dark.  Two hours

to midnight.  The corner of her straw

broom meets the corner

of the baseboard and the door.

They’re old friends.  Or at least there’s that sigh

of knowing when she pulls the handle

toward her,

drawing the dirt to her feet,

making a moat, no drawbridge this time,

wide wide wide for the maiden gone
the maiden still

the maiden the maiden

being sewn and sedated

thirty miles away.