Dishwater
Slap of the screen door, flat knock of my grandmother's boxy black shoes on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride out to the edge and then, toed in with a furious twist and heave, a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands and hangs there shining for fifty years over the mystified chickens, over the swaying nettles, the ragweed, the clay slope down to the creek, over the redwing blackbirds in the tops of the willows, a glorious rainbow with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.
From Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser. Copyright 2004 Ted Kooser. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All rights reserved.