"Grandmother in the Garden" by Louise Glück

 

The grass below the willow
Of my daughter’s wash is curled
With earthworms, and the world
Is measured into row on row
Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real.
The drugged Long Island summer sun drains
Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson
Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life.
The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf
And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes
Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands.
My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos,
My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes
I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows
Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer
Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.

Patricia Polacco