Broom by Deborah Digges

Broom

More than my sixteen rented houses and their eighty or so rooms

held up by stone or cinderblock foundations,

most facing north, with useless basements,

wrought iron fences to the curb,

beat-up black mailboxes—

eagles impaled through breasts to edifice—

or set like lighthouses

some distance from the stoop a thousand miles inland,

or close enough to sea the sea gulls

settled mornings in the playing fields I passed

on this continent and others

as I walked my sons to school or to the train—

more than the kitchen door frames where is carved the progress

of their growth, one then the other on his birthday

backed against a wall, almost on tiptoe—

and more than the ruler

I have laid across their skulls

where the older's brown hair like my own,

or the younger's blond like his father's, covered abundantly

what was once only a swatch of scalp

I'd touch as they slept to know their hearts beat—

more than the height at which, and in this house,

the markings stopped like stairs leading to ground level,

and they walked out into the world,

dogged, no doubt, by the ghost of the man, their father,

and the men who tried to be their fathers,

father their wildness—

and more, even, than the high sashed windows

and windows sliding sideways

through which I watched for them, sometimes squinting,

sometimes through my hands cupped on cold glass

trying to see in the dark my men approaching,

my breath blinding me,

the first born surely the man I would have married,

the second, me in his man's body—

more than the locks left open and the creaking steps,

the books left open like mirrors on the floor

and the sinks where we washed our faces

and the beds above which our threefold dreams collided,

I have loved the broom I took into my hands

and crossed the threshold to begin again,

whose straw I wore to nothing,

whose shaft I could use to straighten a tree, or break

across my knee to kindle the first winter fire,

or use to stir the fire,

broom whose stave is pine or hickory,

and whose skirt of birch-spray and heather

offers itself up as nest matter,

arcs like the equator

in the corner, could we see far enough,

or is parted one way like my hair.

Once I asked myself, when was I happy?

I was looking at a February sky.

When did the light hold me and I didn't struggle?

And it came to me, an image

of myself in a doorway, a broom in my hand,

sweeping out beach sand, salt, soot,

pollen and pine needles, the last December leaves,

and mud wasps, moths, flies crushed to wafers,

and spring's first seed husks,

and then the final tufts like down, and red bud petals

like autumn leaves—so many petals—

sweeping out the soil the boys tracked in

from burying in the new yard another animal—

broom leaving in tact the spiders' webs,

careful of those,

and careful when I danced with the broom,

that no one was watching,

and when I hacked at the floor

with the broom like an axe, jammed handle through glass

as if the house were burning and I must abandon ship

as I wept over a man s faithlessness, or wept over my own—

and so the broom became

an oar that parted waters, raft-keel and mast, or twirled

around and around on the back lawn,

a sort of compass through whose blurred counter-motion

the woods became a gathering of brooms,

onlooking or ancestral.

I thought I could grow old here,

safe among the ghosts, each welcomed,

yes, welcomed back for once, into this house, these rooms

in which I have got down on hands and knees and swept my hair

across my two sons' broad tan backs,

and swept my hair across you, swinging my head,

lost in the motion,

lost swaying up and down the whole length of your body,

my hair tangling in your hair,

our hair matted with sweat and my own cum, and semen,

lost swaying, smelling you,

smelling you humming,

gone in the motion, back and forth, sweeping.