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.
