One day I’m going to scrub-clean the cream blinds
hanging in our kitchen window. Sun reflects oil and dirt,
thick years of stove-top steam and drifts of sliced meat.
All I can think of is my mother’s house:
how it smelled like an orchard, a pine forest, suntan lotion
depending on where you stood, how anything wooden
was deeply polished and anything tiled
sponge wiped down. What I want to know is this:
when did she – loving swing shift working mom
husband scarcely ever there – find the time?
It is enough for me to wash the dishes
and the clothes, sweep the floor, count the coins,
reflect on cacophonies in our apricot tree.
It is morning when the sun is best:
our house is filled with a radiance
I have no part in maintaining
yet I am staring at the blinds
embarrassed, harassed –
if I called her now for an afternoon tea
and she accepted, bringing doughnuts…
and during the dish-stack / counter-clean
I pointed to the kitchen blinds
(or the long table in the hall, the bedroom
mirrors, the ubiquitous inside of the silverware drawer
which catches sneaky breadcrumbs)
I wouldn’t even have to ask.
Problem number twenty-three with trans-national lives.