She Heaved Silent

Beside the stove in the kitchen, tears erased with a hiss

And her hair fell forward to hide it.  Bread rising still and

Outside the clean, wet apron bent over the wire in the wind

The plains threw like a straight ,cold knife

That named its edge by the divisions it made

between mother and child or father

And daughter or wife and husband

How she needed even this domestic miracle, the bread

Rising, to remind her to lift her head

.

The apron slaps.  The white sun marking lines on the vinegar scrubbed

Floors where she'd discovered new creaks beside the old ones,

Those she'd memorized so as not to wake them when passing through the hall.

Do you see the soul thin woman in her white bleached night

Gown working her feet silently toe to heal down the worn wood

To the back door where she'd stretch moon-full

And stealing tomorrow's rest for a moment late at night

In the biting snow that seemed to wash her clear inside?

She thought the snow looked like angels' tears

But they might not have been.

She wanted to talk to them about

Doing God's work.  She sometimes

Wasn't sure if she'd gotten it right.

And the apron lifts itself from the line, catches

above in the pin oak still wearing

leaves through the winter that won't be gathered

until she's sure they've fallen undressed.  Only

then will she go to them scratching her name

hard into the bark with the bread knife after she's raked

every crumbling heart she discarded into a pile she can burn

warming herself against another winter like the one

she didn't know she'd live through.

But she probably did, didn't she.