ManicDDaily

Feeling sorry for all those going back to work tomorrow, especially the teachers!   My mother was a teacher;  she found Sunday nights, even regular Sunday nights (much less vacation Sunday nights) especially hard.   A poem:

Sunday Night Before Work Week

My mom mopped the basement stairs Sunday nights,
moaning that the lazy was at his best
when the sun went to the West.

We hid.
Even though we knew that
we should volunteer–not so much as helpers
but as fodder, like stiff British regulars
marched before the French–she had to get up a good head
of steam, she said, in order to get anything done—
still we slid into our beds like
coins (dull nickels) in search of a slot, feigned sleep,
knowing well that we
were sorry specimens.

The stairwell, narrow but tall.
clouded over with the lost weekend,
the day to come crowding my mother’s forehead
as she bent to her task.
From my room, I could hear the intermittent
rumble of her rhyme.  She
seemed to identify with the lazy, but I was sure
that she felt, secretly, the best,
at least among us.