For She Is A Tree Of Life – Marge Piercy
In the cramped living room of my childhood between sagging rough-skinned sofa that made me itch and swaybacked chair surrounded by ashtrays where my father read every word of the paper shrouded in blue smoke, coughed rusty phlegm and muttering doom, the rug was a factory oriental and the pattern called tree of life. My mother explained as we plucked a chicken tree of…