Improv: Philip Levine’s “Growth”

When my mother retired from the soap factory
she was floor manager and was about to pull her
hair out. She would come home after the whistle
you could hear all over town and iron, slowly,
lilting the machine over the board, something
like meditation. She rarely spoke about work,
and I enjoyed that. I cooked the meals by the grease-
spattered stove: some pasta, some chicken, some
potatoes. The day my mother retired from the soap
factory, they shut it down. The day my mother retired
from the soap factory, the last infantryman left Iraq.
The day my mother retired from the soap factory,
she had no money to live on. The day my mother
retired from the soap factory, I knew I would have
to get a better job. To eventually send her to a home.
To take care of her taxes.