Robert Klein Engler

From tap to tap she goes, then net to mesh.
The blind may never know they scratch their way
like those whose letters cut the world's flesh.

She rubs her hands and wonders what is just.
Her fingers tease the loom that weaves our days,
while armies past imagining trail plumes of dust.

They pressed her back into the blistered sod,
then came the child. Her duty burns like fire.
She calls the motor's hum the wheeze of God.

It rains, and clouds of locus rattle from afar.
Whatever happens now is not to her desire.
This glory is her life, this poem her scar.