Reading a Student's Paper

~Sandra Duguid Marion, on her ladder, pasting flowers— I’m trying to read just that carefully, my scribble on the page accurate, suggestions— to improve a house, its walls— the paper, tight against the ceiling, a brush over the vines, the matching, catching a curve off the line of thought, plurals, possessives, whose entitlement is this? All of us glad, especially Mother, a job done, walls tended—a new place to be, to walk through—to the columns supporting the front porch—Marion later spread the story, how she knew— from down the road— sparrows singing extra clearly and loudly in our bushes the morning my brother was born.