Between
By Marie Ponsot
(for my daughter)
Composed in a shine of laughing, Monique brings in sacks
of groceries, unloads them, straightens, and stretches her back.
The child was a girl, the girl is a woman; the shift
is subtle and absolute, worn like a gift.
The woman, once girl once child, now is deft in her ease,
is door to the forum, is cutter of keys.
In space that her torque and lift have prefigured and set free
between her mother and her child the woman stands
having emptied her hands.
Copyright Credit: "Between" from THE GREEN DARK by Marie Ponsot, copyright © 1988 by Marie Ponsot. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: The Green Dark (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)