I'm thinking, I'm going to read one more.
Mainly because-- because well, my mother
used to tell me that she would hide in the garage, when she
couldn't take the kids anymore.
When she couldn't take us.
And she'd just go there for a few minutes,
and I said, "So that's where you were.
Where's mom?"
And I didn't understand it.
I thought it was a terrible thing to do,
until I had a child, who is actually here tonight all
grown up.
Who now has a child and understands,
I think, a little bit of what this poem is about.
"Daystar"
"She wanted a little room for thinking,
but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children's naps.
Sometimes there were things to watch,
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket, a floating maple leaf.
Other days she stared until she was
assured when she closed her eyes,
she'd see only her own vivid blood.
She had an hour at best before Liza appeared, pouting,
from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice?
Why, building a palace.
Later that night when Thomas rolled over and lurched
into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour, where she was nothing, pure nothing,
in the middle of the day."