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BETTIE SELLERS 529 MORNINGS, SHEBA COMBS HER HAIR from Liza's Monday and Other Poems (1986) She watches from the open door, the man long-legged, tall and straight, his hair aflame like foxes make as they run through the broom sedge patch behind her house. This neighbor passes by each day to climb the slope of Cedar Ridge, cut logs to build a barn near where the trail that crosses Unicoi turns west through Brasstown Gap. She watches, thinking how her own man, gone these three years, never had that loose-limbed stride, that fire atop his head. Older than she, he never made her heart run wild and fly across the valley free as red-tailed hawks rise high on currents of cold morning air. She watches, planning how one day she'll walk out, ask him how his wife does, how his son. She'll wait beside the big oak, ask him in to warm his hands before her hearth, to notice how her dark hair falls as smooth as water in Corn Creek caresses stones. How she will warm cold fingers in his hair, and face eternal burning if she must. ...

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