...POETS' corner

Were I to Wring a Rag


—no matter how much
muscle I might have
mustered—my mother
was like to come along
behind, reach around
me to take it up again
from where I'd left it,
lift it back into my line
of vision and in one
practiced motion from
that strangle in her bare
hands and thin air work
a second miraculous
stream of silver dishwash
into the day's last gleam ...