Grandma Comes for Me

View PDF

Out of Sunday morning dark 
My grandma came for me. 

Stripped bare to dreaming I saw 
Her occupy the fat black leather rocker 

Where my uncle lifted her from bed 
And Mother helped her dress to be, 

The last time up before the liver cancer took her.
Her velvet dress, long, blue on blue. 

And amber beads I knew, but 
Her hand that reached for mine, a 12-year-old’s, 

Lay identical to mine at 72, tawny, 
Veined, with fingers straight, bones obvious 

On the cushioned leather arms. I slid 
My smaller hand to where she covered it 

With hers and pressed anointing into me 
Flooding as her smile between the hollow cheeks, 

The deep brown claiming eyes still holding me 
These sixty years beyond another touch. 

To church I wore my blue on blue ten years hung away
And with her amber beads long curled untouched 

In that dark drawer, the grandma that I am 
Became a lighted shell housing like the wind in trees 

The limber spirit of a girl 
Touched holy by a holy knowing how.