Wrestling with the Angel When I was ten (or was I six? or eight?) I had an infection in my right hip. Walking was agony, the joint inflamed. It was long ago, but I remember struggling to limp across the yard, stiff-legged in my plaid school jumper...
Mother Thoughts She’s wrapped the quilt, red and white, about her shoulders and around the baby too. Snug in their nest, her mind’s adrift— forgotten her book, the painter, his brush. Forgotten the flowers and the little hands that collected them...
The Ball On summer afternoons the park shimmers where trees cast silent shadow symphonies across the grass and gravel. Her own shadow races ahead to grasp the ball before she can scoop it up, already sun-warm, in her hot hands. Her white pinafore...
A Late Riser’s Miserable Breakfast The girl in the striped dress and black ribbons sulks over her cold and solitary breakfast: unfair that everyone else got lovely hot eggs while she’s facing cold loaf and tepid tea in the detested checked mug...
Sailing Boats, Morning The ship’s shadow ripples like spilled ink on the water’s soft blue gauze as if a clumsy scribe upset his bottle, distracted by the way the settling sun has stained the tops of the great brown sails with hearth fire’s dying...
With the So-Called Sick In the green crib the child is not sleeping. Shadow covers the top of the sleepless face and in the shadow the eyes are open wide. Are they looking at Mother’s face as she reads or watching the red pompoms on the toes of her...
Under the Elder Tree the summer light sifts softly through the leaves and dapples the rosy-cheeked mother, kissing her hair as she sits easily on her straight wooden chair with a child cradled in her lap, so used to the weight and heft of that head...
The children are finally in bed and in the lamp’s glow mama has her mending spread before her on the table patching another rend or sewing on a button and on the other side of the table papa leans over his page. He’s reading to her and...
