One more.
Keats thought his heart too small to hold its blood.
I'm reading his letters at the kitchen
table, where a window hangs the pepper tree in the room.
What's outside, alive and moving in a summer wind--
contained, yet threatening to break the frame.
My mother at 87, quavery of voice and limb,
filled an afternoon with small stories of all the people who
kept her household working--
gardener, handyman, a girl to hang the curtains.
When, suddenly-- could you remind me how to multiply
fractions--
a shy leaf of a question that can
threaten the frame of a life, the task we
sat down to work on.