by Andrea Potos 
HOW THE WRITING CHANGES

The words start out small, tidy--
grids on a streetmap,
suburban houses where families
sit down to meat loaf and potatoes,
and the mother always serves herself last.
Then, as she rises to wipe the table,
she looks past her husband¹s mute face
to the clearing
through the kitchen window, the sky
burning to dusk and fireflies lifting
their lit bodies from the grass.
She opens the back door and heads for the stream
whose water she has heard in her sleep
for the flowing that leads to the river
where the white water rushes.

-from Yaya's Cloth (Iris Press, 2007).