The Sifting Poem by Judith Skillman

Through the long hours of afternoon,
the torture of opera wedded to scents
of rising bread, a river of cardamom
merging with poppy seeds - this was the art
of childhood, not to be mastered but
conquered by. All through the long hours
of an afternoon punctuated
by swipes of viola bow and their
attendant flats, always in residence
in the house of my parents, humbled
but not poor, its windows tinted by rain
sun, or snow, a house immoderately
fond of its yard, a yard gone spindly
with saplings in whose arches ballerinas
twirled, jeted, and pirouetted come evening,
when droplets, flakes, or hail from Thor
fell, and thunder.