Recalling Grandma Paula

I recall my grandmother’s back yard and the roses
in her front yard.

My grandfather walks a dog in the earliest morning.
My grandmother takes baths.

Even then her back ached;
now it is something
worse – unbearable maybe.
Although she bears it.

I can remember the wine glasses
hung upside down
the colored glass elephants
and angels
on ledges and shelves.

There is a fireplace
a deck for family dinners
a basketball hoop in the driveway
and a room where I sleep on the floor
with my head under the desk.

Someone says my cousin and I are indistinguishable
between the nose and the chin.
Maybe it is our grandfather’s smile.
I remember the piecrusts pinched up along the edges
and the card games
– Go Fish, Rummy –
golf and baseball on the TV.

I remember the dinners my grandmother made
for the man down the street. He lived
in a dark house. He loved
my grandmother.

My grandmother is not racist
like some grandmothers I have met.

Only the Republicans made her mad
before.

Now they live in a smaller house
which is good
or closer to good.

My grandfather walks a different dog in the earliest morning.
My grandmother takes baths.

There are still roses
in the front yard. Still
cards and pie crusts.

I wish I could remember everything. I wish
that her back never hurt.
I used to think she was invincible.

Grandma Ranch

Today is my Grandma Ranch’s birthday. I am so lucky to have her. I wrote this poem for a class last year. I don’t know that she would remember the stories in the same way — they change when they’re retold, don’t they? In any case, thanks for being such a powerful person, Grandma; I love you. Happy birthday.

Going Home

I have been in the kitchen
where my grandmother turned
with a frying pan in hand
to face Italian mafia men
and Detroit cops
who bought hunting advice
and guns at the same shop
ended up at the same ranch
and nearly had a knife fight
there, in the kitchen.

I have stood on the ground
where my grandfather’s mother
homesteaded, left behind
a wood frame in tall grass
that stayed on falling down
for years into my childhood
until the year a fire consumed
180,000 acres of Montana around our ranch
and the land up Trout Creek.

I have passed the one-room schoolhouse
where another grandmother taught the ranching children
who walked all the miles
even in winter
back and forth
and I know the story of the one
so cold when he arrived
that my grandmother had to run warm
water and rub and rub
to thaw his blue black fingers.

And I am proud
although the nobility of it
escapes me sometimes
when I notice everything has remained the same.
These women are only remembered
by their daughters.

I am tired of wisdom in resignation.