Poems III: "Early in the Morning"

Here's another favorite called "Early in the Morning," by Li-Young Lee . . .

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.

In The Language of Life, Bill Moyers provides this brief bio: "Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia, to exiled Chinese parents. His grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, his mother was member of the Chinese royal family, and his father was once personal physician to Mao Tse-tsung. Fleeing persecution in Indonesia, the family wandered through Southeast Asia for five years before arriving in the United States, where his scholarly father became pastor of a small Presbyterian church."