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 . . .