Storm Windows, by Julia Alvarez

She climbed toward the sky

when we did windows,

while I stood by, her helper,

doing the humdrum groundwork,

carrying her sloppy buckets

back and forth to the spigot,

hosing the glasses down

under the supervision

up there on a ladder

she had forbidden me.

I wanted to mount that ladder,

rung by rung, look down

into the gaping mouths of buckets,

the part in her greying hair.

I wanted to rise, polishing into each pane

another section of the sky.

Then give a kick, unbuckling

her hands clasped about my ankles,

and sail up, beyond her reach,

her house, her yard, her mothering.

From “Homecoming: New and Collected Poems� by Julia Alvarez. (Plume: 120 pp., $9.95) .