In the picture you are a child
standing in your wild appalachia
barefooted in overalls
amid a great depression.
Sunny hair frames your face
like a cloud
I wonder that you never caught cold
spry in unbroken motion
crouching in a wide-brimmed hat
to tend gardens and wade creeks.
A stroke steals
swiftly then slowly.
Clutching your hand in a
stark hospice room,
you suddenly knew me.
I could not tell you, but
I wonder if you knew.
It has been a year.
Turning turning, this world
ensnared by its usual vices,
cyclical soft spots of
diseased bodies and minds.
Will my children
keep jugs of Clorox like you
hid coffee cans of cash?
Fearsome
to be so delighted by babies.
Holding mine you fondly call them
towheads,
wistfulness mutes piercing blue.
I had never heard the word,
part of a grandmotherly lexicon,
spoken in a soft Virginia drawl over
rumpled blonde curls
as a blessing.