The Woman Who Moved Mountains
Posted: December 16th, 2010, 8:40 pm
She moved mountains,
more than one she moved,
more than one she raised,
not of earth or stone or snow.
Of soiled clothes on Mondays
she raised mountains, Tuesdays
built mesas of clean foldings.
Nights after mornings she emptied
landfilled kitchen sinks,
raised foothills of bread,
whipped up potato sierras,
adorned their meadows with gravy lakes.
She scrambled hills
of eggs, built them of their shells,
cookies, brown-bagged lunches.
She swept up little hills
of underbed dust, careless dirt
clinging to sneakers, shaken
from weeds among violets, saved
to soften those steep slopes
with color and fragrance.
She shoveled ridges of garden soil.
Rivers she made, meandering
valleys of tomatoes and squash.
Higher and higher, steeper and steeper
she built her peaks of love and climbed
until the day she fell.
Jim
And that mountain-moving-making was AFTER working 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. 7 days a week. No, we don’t ever want to go back there, although many are still there, but like the homeless, unseen. “Poem,” if that’s what it is, based on personal experience.
more than one she moved,
more than one she raised,
not of earth or stone or snow.
Of soiled clothes on Mondays
she raised mountains, Tuesdays
built mesas of clean foldings.
Nights after mornings she emptied
landfilled kitchen sinks,
raised foothills of bread,
whipped up potato sierras,
adorned their meadows with gravy lakes.
She scrambled hills
of eggs, built them of their shells,
cookies, brown-bagged lunches.
She swept up little hills
of underbed dust, careless dirt
clinging to sneakers, shaken
from weeds among violets, saved
to soften those steep slopes
with color and fragrance.
She shoveled ridges of garden soil.
Rivers she made, meandering
valleys of tomatoes and squash.
Higher and higher, steeper and steeper
she built her peaks of love and climbed
until the day she fell.
Jim
And that mountain-moving-making was AFTER working 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. 7 days a week. No, we don’t ever want to go back there, although many are still there, but like the homeless, unseen. “Poem,” if that’s what it is, based on personal experience.
