A Room in the Past

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright 
you can’t see beyond its windows 
into the afternoon. A kitchen 
falling through time with its things 
in their places, the dishes jingling 
up in the cupboard, the bucket 
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck 
was thirty years. No one’s at home 
in this room. Its counter is wiped, 
and the dishrag hangs from its nail, 
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist, 
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother 
moved through this life like a ghost, 
and when she had finished her years, 
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back 
on the rest of us, forever.