Up Dublin Street at twilight, Gladys 
waits at windows, watching night unroll its carpet
 
onto the floors of the house. She stopped 
the clock when she sent her girls, with them
 
the plate she’d laid for their father who works 
nights at the hospital lot gathering tips. She’d baked 

the cornbread, buttered the rice, turned out 
the pinto beans before burning, 

though there are times when the shadow comes and she 
forgets. That hovering white

face, white  breath inside her breath, her heels in the icy 
stirrups where the nurse had placed them. She was young 

then and golden, eyes pale 
as the gray lake, hair smooth without lye, her nose
 
keen enough. Now she walks only 
to church, though she’ll often look

 towards town. She’ll take 
company if the pastor stops. He holds her hand as if
 
it were a sparrow, says: 
You must not name the devil. But these things 

do have a way 
of naming themselves.