No part of me but has not known
that mainly I was waiting.
I did not move for waiting,
but circled within my aura
like a tail-chasing cat, aware
I was biding my time.
Never woman-mentored,
I manned the ascending currents
that rose in curls from men’s cigars,
married, had children, kept houses,
and flipped the pages of calendars.
Followed the plan like homemade bread.
But at my ending in my age,
wound down by overmuch waiting,
my broom unceasingly flaming,
I left my outworn plan at home
to do what had to be done. Clasping
my broom to my breast, I left.
I flew off and swept the world,
all unclean and festering places,
cleansed the whole wide place
with my furious storming broom.
Winds at my bidding, we accomplished
the earth and sky before returning.
I then wrote done on the little pad
I keep on my kitchen counter
for reminder notes. Fait accompli.
I could stay home, put things to rights,
pick up where I’d left, make a show,
pretend I was the same person.
What fired my broom to magnificence
wasn’t the dust on grand pianos,
but falsehood, deep as mountains are high,
the slime of a zillion evasions.
All I could do about such ignorance
was give my pixilated broom its head.
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