but then I open one, and find things--poems--like this:
In my memories of childhood, days are mostly mornings, the prairie sun slanting through the asparagus fronds, and my mother picking berries ahead of the heat, her freckles grace notes on her ruddy cheeks, her housedress cool and smooth as the ground behind the shed, and the smell of her like wash hanging, and her laugh like the lark on high....
The other part is night, the dark velvet earth
scent and the stillness, the house lights drawing bugs, and such peace, such safety, in the nighthawk's bounce, and my mother singing, folding clothes like sheets of sunlight dried.
When my mother died, after all the old, after
all the pain and shrinking, after the robber's art, she looked a baby then, new and helpless.
My tears fell on the leaves she loved, and
in the sparkling sunshine, we put her in the ground,
