Toil

Melissa Morphew

                       The trellised rose
spills pink petals into afternoon hush, the blue whisper
of porch-shadow, shade.  And her grandfather naps
in his black winter suit, a formal vulnerability, a fragile stillness,
interrupted only by his stuttered-snores, the stale air of his sleep
humming like garrulous bees back and forth,
back and forth into the treacle-light nectar of his dreams.
        And so his siesta mimics the rhythm of her fingers
as she strings beans; with each snap-pull, snap-pull, a mechanical lament
throbs her wrists like migraine.  She discards
thread-fine tendrils—a verdant calligraphy curled
bright against the yellow emptiness
of a bright yellow bowl.  Snap-pull, snap-pull,
the beans ticking off an abacus of chlorophyll green.
She will cook the beans with fatback,
bake a pan of buttermilk-cornbread— a temporary stay
against such paltry hunger. Her hands empty,
fill with the ache
                      of an ordinary day,
the entropy of soiled sheets and egg-crusted plates,
dahlias left too long in a blue vase
sweet with putrefaction—such an ordinary ache.
She gathers windfall apples, kneads sourdough bread, her fingers
move back and forth, back and forth, somnambulant.
This list of chores her number line,
the calendar of her life—this work, this beauty,
this beauty, this work.
        She sits on the porch after sundown,
notices how sometimes the wind
combing through the scrub oaks
sounds like the impossible distance
of a conch-shell ocean.