Everything here measures: weight, effort, sin— <br />and everything costs in this seclusion <br /> <br />of daughters, the place an ark—its hold <br />all of a kind in an archaic, combed <br /> <br />order: straightened teeth, trained spines, the chapel's <br />benches in rigid rows before crimson <br /> <br />kneeling pillows, slim beds in dormitories, <br />the muted ticking of practice rooms, the stalls <br /> <br />just-mucked, the halls humid with breathing. <br />And in the brushes, their hair—enough to line <br /> <br />the nests of a hundred generations of birds.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-physical-plant-as-prologue/
