White Pan

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.[ARTHUR SYMONS]

I close my eyes to see Willet avenue
with its brick homes
and stony steps.
It's small basements
and floody depths.

The water is rising.

It destroys everything.

No insurance hose to suck up the flood, instead
plastic containers.
Toys to be thrown out,
few clothes to be made even fewer,
the lines separating her face appear again
just as they did last time.
All I could do was stand and watch.
Watch as the narrow walkway, wide enough for one person,
turned into a smelly swamp.
We were the guppies now.
The bathroom became a toxic waste plant
worked in by latexed hands and hankerchiefed faces.
Ammonia was thrown out back
to keep the cats from lingering
while we opened the door
to let some good air in.
Everything had to be wiped down with bleach,
floors mopped,
carpets pulled up.....
Scrubbing has never been so hard, a thought
while fanning away sweat and flies.
The work was tedious,
but by now we'd fallen into routine.
The scrubbing made knuckles raw
and beautiful brown skin became wrinkly,
too soft.
"I am blessed oh Lord,
I am blessed oh Lord..."
Chorus' rose in times when will power stretched thin.
Smiles on faces
but inside...
I was hating life, hating people for being so ignorant,
vexed with God.
Yet when I looked over to her, she smiled
and sang
smiled and sang.
I am not a mind reader.
so I smiled and sang,
and scrubbed and sang.
I couldn't let her know it was getting to me
Between the two of us, I was afraid that if I fell
she'd fall too.
We'd work past the night,
all the while scrubbing away at sleep.

The scrubbing never stops.

Everything has to been clean.

After,
I thought I'd still have it in me to scrub myself the same way,
I settled for cheap bar soap
and the same white pan every time.


DeidreAnn