The God of Brooms Has Forsaken Brooms

 What are we to do?
It's not as though the weeping willow,

Seen through the little window
Above the sink, in the wrong light,

Captivated her, her dust
Swept into piles and then abandoned.

Or the wind. Or the long fingers
Of the magician, coins flashing.

No, she was like the rest of us,
At the table, shelling peas

Or reading distractedly, wedged
Between ticks of the clock,

Her soul gnawed to the quick:
She knew that she was needed,

And that if she trundled out the old bike
She had not ridden for years,

Pumped up the tires,
And announced that we had no milk,

She would not be back.
She was no different.

In the corner, her broom leaned
Into its body as all brooms do,

Light and long and elegant and fantastic
And onerous and awful and beyond grace.

Alan Michael Parker.