Sweeping

By Jennifer Stewart Miller

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Anything she could sweep, my mother swept—
dust, dog hair, sand, cereal, snow.

Natural brooms, always—corn or straw—bristles
that abrade like hearts with all the cleaning up,

wearing into the wave-shape of their daily swishes. 
Chain-store stock, blue-handled brooms 

to sweep up blue things—anger, lies, 
sickness, secrets, grief. A difficult moment 

is a good time for a broom—
				                  as is a birthday,

a baby, a party. Joy’s a squall, a scatter, a spill, 
a bit of dropped luck. Whisk up 

every grain and crumb while you can, in case
you, too, collapse between refrigerator and stove 

and can’t get up. Now that my mother 
can’t do it herself, I sweep where she points. 

But last week on the porch, there were leaves—
and a broom. I caught her just as she let go 

of her walker and reached out her arms. 

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Jennifer Stewart Miller is the author of Thief (2021), winner of the 2020 Grayson Prize, and a chapbook, The Strangers Burial Ground (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, RHINO, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere, and have received multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.

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