all your life.
The oarlock wears it out
till there's not much left of it--and
you're the one who did it.
Andrew Wyeth
maybe taking to her hip the way she had to near
the end the way her dis-
ease curled her and burled
her knuckles and knees
and made them seem
a Stradivari
pegbox and scroll
and pelvis an f hole under her
skin and made them
cellos and violins
fists stiff with her peculiar
euphony...broke off ...maybe
she missed being
able to lift the cellar door or grip
the pull to take in the whiff
of the underneath before she went down
in to get whatever was
hidden there. To bend her knees without
needing to think to grab at some deliberate
clutch: the doorjamb the window
casing and how later the years were
laid into the paint by kitchen grease and wood
smoke and constant touching
and by the time
the door stayed shut enough toward forever
it was a slit of an eye
when she dragged herself by
it and sometimes puffed up some kind
of dust: cat hair, chicken dander, Andy's or
Alvaro's mud coming undone from
the boot tread and left off almost perfect
a little castle of sand
she'd've swept if she were able to
stand and now it collects
in hinges of the brass pocket-door pull
in the cellar door and the scroll
a mote throughout...
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