Squatters

This August fourteen squatters

Are evicted from the levee:

A father, a mother, three daughters,

A handsome brace of sons and a slicky she

Dog. The mother who guarded

Well her violent brood

(Who let them bathe along the back bed

Of the Mississippi) is gathering up her hood

Of burlap and coming down upon

This violet day to walk

Among my mother's flowers and skirt the sun.

What a brilliant time to talk

With flowers: the moonvine,

Periwinkle, elephant ear,

Althaea and yellow flocks are all ashine;

The voice of the day is as clear

As the sound of a China cup

Breaking; and she is all alone

Centuries old drawing herself up,

An oriental in a field of stone.

How sad. Unequal to profundity

Of flowers, with more than twenty

Years upon her bush, she is strangely free

Of the crew who pluck her shanty.

That is perhaps the way it should be.

Life is cheap in China because there

Is too much of it. Here there is too little,

My mother opened the door and shook her hair.

The family moves along the levee.

Mother who has spent many hours

With her garden tools is steady.

She tucks the loam and weeds the flowers.