She twirls into a sudden dance,
Or scribbles with her crayon green,
Or hums a tune she’s never heard,
Or all together: single thing.
She’s not an -er or -ess or -ist.
She doesn’t wear those lanyard nouns.
She’s happy doing just the verb
In tearing, browning, smelling gowns.
“A shame,” she says at eighty-three.
“I took so long to just recall
How as a child I never thought
I had to separate them all.”
Minakhi Misra 