There’s a line of women 

picking peaches warm as ovens 

from the branches of my family tree, 

and I break it, send my daughter 

droopy-collared, crinkle-bowed, 

scuff-toed to school, tell myself 

she’s free, no dust in this dream, 

till the second day of second grade, 

when she asks me, worming into her tights, 

Please. I sense them before I see them, 

funk of sassafrass, gospel of bangles

on wrists, the unsaid I-told-you-so,

dresses so crisp. There’s a gap 

in the line that they’ve held just for me, 

and I take up my place, steam rising 

from impossible pleats. Undiminished, 

I polish her shoes, and learn from the hands 

that learned from the hands that learned 

from the hands at the front of the line 

how to french braid her hair, which I do.

Every chin of every woman 

in this line is on the uptilt.  

Not pride, the sin, but pride,

the high bar vaulted.