Showing posts with label Grandma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grandma. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Wild Peaches and the River




 She tucked me into bed,
wrapped me in
an age-worn quilt
and I slept like the baby I nearly was.

When I woke,
I pulled the quilt around me
and tiptoed across the old wood floors
covered with braided rugs.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes,
I entered the kitchen
and watched her sitting at the farm table,
with a cup of steaming coffee, slicing a wild peach.

Her hands were still strong then;
and even now I never see a peach,
smell one, taste one,
without thinking of her.

She laughed, her mellow way, eyes crinkling,
when I said how much I liked the sweetness
but not the fuzzy skin which poked
like a prickly moustache against my mouth.

Overheard her saying, later
that she ‘got tickled’
when I’d said the pigs rooting in the pen
looked like they had ribbons in their tails.

When I’d trailed her
to the rabbit cages
and saw a mama rabbit
eat her own baby

she didn’t shield me
from the horror of it,
but let me ask the hard questions
and answered them, best she knew.

‘Fascinating’ is what I’d called it,
when asked about it back home.
And she was, too,
though I never said it.

Except at the cemetery overlooking the river
when I wished her back
to see me enjoy the sweetness in my life,
to bring lightness when it poked;

and because the questions
have only gotten harder.
But mostly, to hear her ‘tickled’ laughter
one more time.




Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

For Grandma.  Rest in peace, we so often rested in yours.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Paper Dolls, 1950’s Single Mother


butter she
mixed with sugar
and fed to us
on saltine crackers


we washed it down
with powdered milk
we were poor
we were rich
we didn’t know either


until we
went to school
and our dolls of paper,
worthless
to friends whose had
vinyl and mohair
and real clothes,


became priceless
because
she’d made
them all
by hand


for Mom and for Grandma (Elaine Rogers, 1926 – 2010)
Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner
added to The Poetry Pantry