(seen through a window)
She sat at her kitchen table.
Her hair was wild. Loose curls
floated first forward, then back,
forward and back as she nodded
and lowered her eyes to her work.
She sat shredding lettuce,
and listening to someone.
At first, an occasional blue-
clothed elbow would jerk
into view, and then a long blue arm
gesticulating. Its angular, bony
fingers pointed like wands
where neither of them was looking.
Slowly the arm increased
to half a torso, one stiff leg,
and a tiny patch of neck skin
while spiny shreds of green
piled up in a large clear bowl.
A bolt of blue cloth whirled
across the window, and then the man
(it was a man) folded his suit-coat
over a chair back, dropping
his mouth down briefly into view from
behind the wall. The last wet
bits of leaf her scissory
hands ripped sprinkled down.
She spoke. The man (red hair!
her husband?) stepped into sight
and sat beside her. Between them
on the table, the lettuce heart
(the inedible part) lay thick and hard.
The full bowl glistened with dinner.