Girl Spinner In Carolina Cotton Mill, 1909

                                                                after Lewis Hine

Maybe her crossed black and white eyes

wept, as each acceleration

of the immense cotton

lyre deafened her. Maybe the voice

and face of Jesus comforted

her breathing, in the mill’s fire-

inhibiting drenched air. What’s clear

is this: dazed, grateful, she stood

one day at the picket gate, just there,

smiling widely, moon-

white face facing the Kodak. Hine

wrote down no name for her. 

                                                          for my grandmother, Ethen Brinson Fordham, 1895-1972