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  • Early In The Morning
    Li-Young Lee
    14 Aug 2003

    While the long grain is softening
    in the water, gurgling
    over a low stove flame, before
    the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
    for breakfast, before the birds,
    my mother glides an ivory comb
    through her hair, heavy
    and black as calligrapher's ink.

    She sits at the foot of the bed.
    My father watches, listens for
    the music of comb
    against hair.

    My mother combs,
    pulls her hair back
    tight, rolls it
    around two fingers, pins it
    in a bun to the back of her head.
    For half a hundred years she has done this.
    My father likes to see it like this.
    He says it is kept.

    But I know
    it is because of the way
    my mother's hair falls
    when he pulls the pins out.
    Easily, like the curtains
    when they untie them in the evening.

    ...Beautiful poem...