From New Poems (2000), "study the masters" Summary

This is a poem about the poet's Aunt Timmie, who irons linen for a living. She takes in laundry so no one really knows whose sheets she is ironing, but the poem supposes that Aunt Timmie has ironed sheets belonging to a master poet, whether it was for his home or hotel. The poet dreams, lying on the sheets, and the poet notes that Aunt Timmie dreams too, in her ancestral languages, sometimes Cherokee, sometimes Masai, and sometimes the universal language that will take one beyond one's circumstances: hope.

Aunt Timmie chants as she irons, revealing artistic concepts that the poet and other artists would know, such as "form and line and discipline and order." Further, Aunt Timmie's chanting reveals "America," which means that she believes that someday, somehow...