MY GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE
Under the hydrangeas on the front lawn
I played with little dolls, the ones
You cut dresses for out of sewing scraps,
Envying my cousins their sibling
Camaraderie. Blackberries bubbled
In pastures overgrown with birches
Where no wolves loitered and rose
Again at breakfast dewy with cream.
The linoleum was cool under feet admonished
To wear sandals. Sunlight baptized
The dining room and half an acre
Of canning vegetables and cucumbers
To be salt-layered in crocks. Roosters
With a glad cry woke me on the airy
Piazza where insects ticking on screens
Had lulled me to sleep. My humpty-dumpty
Grandfather brought four daughters and
Eliza Jane down from New Brunswick
To start a new century in a new land.
A master carpenter, he built their house
Commodious with indoor plumbing. My
Youngest aunt was married in the parlor
While I, a flower girl with stage fright,
Cried on the oak stairs. By that front
Window my grandmother’s cheek
Was granite under my lips when Aunt
Pearl led me to her coffin. “Let
Your vittles shut your mouths,” Grandpa
Advised his grandchildren at the table.
Every Thanksgiving the hydrangeas were brittle
Brown cotton candy on fragile sticks.