Parlor Maid
Autumn. Oblique light
slants through the pantry window
plays on cut glass while
her small, calloused hands
so carefully arrange dried fruits
delicately sugared.
She sets the dish
on tatted lace on teak
returns to make another
for the salon.
When evening’s guests
sweep across polished floors
she will be gone. She sighs.
The sunlight disappears.
Beyond the gardens
the waters darken.
Layered, lonely cries
so like a baby’s rise
from Soo-Nipi,
Lake of the Wild Geese.
A dark sky
releases fat raindrops.
They tap the window glass.
She turns back to her work,
thinks of her children.
• • •
Christine Hague is a retired librarian. She has written for The Concord [NH] Monitor as well as columns in three weekly newspapers. Her stories and poems have been published in The Aurorean, Thema, Around Concord, Earth’s Daughters, Trajectory and other magazines. She and her husband live in New Hampshire.