Woman Working, by Ashley Mabbitt

Seated Woman Scraping a Parsnip, by Nicolaes Maes (Netherlands). c. 1655.

​Woman Working

Her eyes focus downward

on the parsnip
as she peels

A faint smile

She loves to work by sunlight
from the window
beside her

Early afternoon 
late fall or winter

Morning frost
threaded through the grass
has gone

Somewhere else in the room
just returned from the cold air
must be a quiet man

Red cheeks
hair smelling of wood smoke

Bending at the knee 
he opens his palms 
to the crackling fire

Ashley Mabbitt

Ashley Mabbitt lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in international STM publishing. Her poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal and Avocet Weekly, and she studies poetry in workshops at the 92nd Street Y. She also studied with Ruth Stone and Liz Rosenberg as an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Binghamton.