Invisible Work
or teachers, guides whose gestures I recall better than names
so much I’ve been taught I have yet to know
but ode to every stitch of braid past my mother’s fingertips
sewing countless
buttons for every day my grandmother
cooked and cleaned house twice
& Sis. Eugenia Foster
who kept my brother and I in summer who taught me
steeping and drinking tea & how I could call for someone
but not cry when they passed over
the wind chimes too all their constant worry with wind
even after her stroke my grandmother Dorothy rose on cold nights
pulled a heavy leg down the hall
to cover me with a quilt
her own grandmother quilted
on his days off my only father
lacquered my found rocks
praised my keen eye
wasn’t he urging me to notice?
I see now,
all this gracious lack of accounting & maybe too
how tonight in terrific storm when the wind picked up and pitched
warning this primal body took off running
homing through our dark house
towards the beds where my children sleep
Copyright © 2024 by Kwoya Maples. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I’d woken to thunder and squeals of the wind, and having lived during Hurricane Hugo as a child, I panicked and ran upstairs to check on my children, who slept peacefully. Afterwards, I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up in the living room. I felt a bit foolish, but also grateful for my instincts. As the adrenaline settled I thought of those who’d tended me in the night, how so often their invisible actions went unnoticed, and this is the poem that came.”
—Kwoya Maples
Kwoya Fagin Maples
