Stephanie Kraft
There's a Hummingbird in the Frittata
Middle-aged women must be witches skilled
in the concoction of antidotes for the sicknesses
that infect the trifles of life.
There are epidemics that breed in
the dreary still life of dirty dishes in the sink.
Freedom is a pinhole of light
that seems to shrink as one sees one's elders
growing more intent on using up small pieces of soap,
losing keys as if the world were suddenly freed from doors and locks.
Middle-aged women must be conjurors
pulling the sense of humor from a drawer like a lost sock,
rubbing the balm of the years on the bruise of the day.
Their gardens are for herbs that heal,
secret sulfurs that tint hydrangea sky blue,
laughter that finds its haven in towers of hollyhock.
Bio
Stephanie Kraft is a retired journalist and Polish to English translator. Her poems have appeared in The Prose Poem Project, Christian Century and Dappled Things. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA.