| Poem for My Grandmother 1. That Monday morning in May it was grey in Syracuse Your son my father called He said she is dead He said She died on her way up the stone steps into Church It's funny he said It was such a sunny Sunday morning She was fine and then she fell He said She left you money 2. Your house: a stone's throw from the pond where I first hooked a fish. The barb went through his eye. I lay him in the grass to die...Is this why when I teach, my hands gasp for breath, reach out to grasp the death in the air? Is death the truth living there? 3. In a dream as real as the snap a snake makes leaping you kissed me with your grin of an eel you pushed your papery breasts like wasps' nests against my chest 4. Grandmother, I feared your flesh the way I feared a tremendous imaginary fish was going to graze my leg. I feared your thin two purple lips when you had been in swimming. I feared you would live forever... 5. Once I carved a heart in the bark of the tallest pine in your back yard. I watched how pitch dripped, slower than blood. It took me death to admit the pain I meant to put that tree through. Grandmother, I love you. Copyright (c) 2000 by Douglas Eichhorn << index >> |