WEBVTT

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When I was growing
up in Washington D.C.

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there were a number of women
who were cleaning women,

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so we had them around there.

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They have an estate
all their own,

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but in Washington they were
into the government buildings.

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And I used to see them at
night at the bus stops waiting

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to go into a building
either to clean it

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or leaving the building,
and for some reason

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that image came to me
recently of cleaning women.

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And I wrote this poem
about Hattie Elder.

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She doesn't really
exist, but then she does.

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If you held her, her
bones would crack and sink

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into their skulls
like morning frost.

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You would not know that
her body had scrubbed

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its way into the flesh of
the dreams of her husband

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and children and grandchildren
with every swing of the mop

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or fall of floor that held the
footprints of executive suites

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in cold, unmanageable buildings,
or that she once made peace

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with little imputed
dreams that called

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to her in the language
she surely felt but never

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completely understood or wanted
to know as she was conflicted

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and given to odd
things, old things,

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things are predestined
her to that of caretaker.

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But if you dare to
touch her, woman

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of so many years of
benign love the living

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of which comforted her in
pale and impossible moments,

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you would know her
bones and now gnarled

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hands carried within them a
rich and profound blessing

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and was even too
heavy for her to bear,

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so she was thankful for
the skin of her dreams

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thinning as the days went by.

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She was thankful, and if
you dared to touch her,

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you would know
that what she meant

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as she searched your face
like the road leading

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to her tiny house, the
bone and home of it

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and whatever
traveled in your eye.

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Her tidy floors were her floors.

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No one else could clean
them as well as she,

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and whoever walked upon them
had been blessed by her.

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She took pride in that
and a certain care that

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outlasted the pain she
felt in her legs and arms

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and back and the wheelchair she
knew awaited for her trouble.

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Sometimes the buildings
talked to her,

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and she talked back while
riding the midnight bus to home

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and what there awaited.

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And you would know if
you dared to touch her

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that her presence
was what counted even

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as her fragile figure beckoned
you into a shelter of whatever

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is permanent, for touching her
would expose your mortality.

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But if you were fortunate,
she would direct her eye

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to a black and golden butterfly,
the monarch of the lens of all

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your fallible
senses, and you would

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see her enter into its
wings for a midnight nap

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while the executive suites
smoldered, brightened,

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and beckoned in the dark.

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