New Poem

I posted last year the eulogy I wrote for my grandma, Louise Evans. It says many of the good things I'm thinking about today. This year, I thought I'd write her a poem.


Sawbuck

No clothesline held my weight when I was small.
I learned to swing from a metal T
we bent slightly the afternoon I couldn’t do pull-ups.

It takes nine long steps to cross the backyard
and stay just wide of wet snouts poking through the fence
next door. Always,

someone I love has understood better how to care
for the living things around me. In the kitchen, frozen bacon fat

loosens the skin of salted onions and fresh beans.
A fryer chicken defrosts in the sink.
A freezer full of meat and butter seals itself against the summer heat

of another city, a different state,
small and improbable as a hummingbird boring the wood
of a cellar I’ll never again open from within.