This is one of the first poems I ever wrote. It was written in the summer of 2007 at the Writing Salon, with Chris DeLorenzo teaching. I have followed him ever since, so grateful for finding a method and a muse.
Grandma
We would always pass by it in the car
on the way to Grandma's:
the dilapidated building
held up by splintered wooden legs,
the façade about to cave in from lack
of strength, threatening to tumble
and roll in our direction.
Empty tanks stood tall like towers in the front:
three of them – one, two three.
The sign in front read "GAS" -- G-A-S,
but the cavities remained still.
It always filled me with melancholy,
that station: deserted, no friends to welcome it, to visit,
abandoned and eroded, weathered like Grandma's
face, the lines traced together to form a Picasso.
No doubt she had lived a life unimagined, but not uninspired:
She had seen countless wars over the course
of her eighty-one years. She helped in harvesting the farm,
living off it, up at 5 a.m. and asleep by 8:30 every night,
planning unearned, often unpleasant chores for tomor
I recall on those adventures spendid,
was passing that tired, run-down gas station,
only ten more minutes before the car turned left
onto the gravel, dirt road,
room for only one vehicle at a time,.
Around the bend, the small church stood,
congregation of thirty-five,
then down the slope to the schoolhouse,
closed long ago before World War Two,
passing fields of corn, tall and elegant,
proud of the precious fruit they bore.
Finally in the distance – Grandma's house!
She was always waiting out in front,
I had no idea of how long she had been standing
there, wearing her white cotton dress
with tiny blue flowers, something she had made
and worn for a thousand summers,
not a stain to be seen. There she was smiling,
waving, allowing the 1968 Chevrolet
to come to a full halt. I was always the first
to open the door, run into her arms,
first generation to third.
Grandma may have lived the bulk of her existence
on that farm, gathering vegetables and cow's milk,
baking fruit pies, cooling on open window sills,
cooking braised roast every night for the farm hands,
later watching Walter Cronkite deliver the catastrophes
of the day. Still, there was never a person kinder,
wiser, more tolerant of life's paradoxes,
flying with the wind, not resisting the tension,
forever loving, soft-spoken and funny.
She could observe simplicity
and make it appear profound.
It was my favorite vacation:
the farm itself a young boy's playground,
six hundred acres of pure bliss,
hanging out with my cousins,
walking past the barn, down to the creek,
where we would swim, laugh and play,
with nothing complicated, never a worry,
always grateful for what I had.
