solitary and conspicuous as plain
and neat as walls impossible to
fresco and you watched her self-
conscious features shape about
a Horn & Hardart teaspoon
with a pucker from a cartoon
she would not understand
with spine as straight and solid
as her years of bending over floors
allowed
skin cleared of interest by a ruthless
soap nails square and yellowclean
from metal files
sitting in a forty-year-old-flush
of solitude and prickling
from the new white cotton blouse
concealing nothing she had ever noticed
even when she bathed and never
hummed a bathtub tune nor knew one
If you saw her square
above the dirty
mopped-on antiseptic floors
before the rag-wiped table tops
little finger broad and stiff
in heavy emulation of a cockney
mannerism
would you turn her treat
into surprise
observing
happy birthday