Poetry

Dry and creased

Her hands look like mine but worn

Gripping the wheel and tapping to the music

Like a sunset over the bluegrass she smiles

pull out my phone and ask “what should we listen to next?”

She breaks her gaze to meet my eyes

and squints and tilts her head

I know this means she does not hear and so I ask again

When she answers I am taken back to when

My mama taught me to make sweet tea

The lifeblood of my youth

Tap water and splenda

Blend together as she whispers me the recipe sing-songily

same blue plastic pitcher

Now i know how it looks from above

im just tall enough to see above the windowsill now

Or the win-duh-sill as she calls it

i catch glimpses of the dogwood and the big Magnolia out front

but i strain to see the japanese maple

The one my grandmother planted when i was born

I wonder sometimes if it still lives there

The Guardsmen of my memories

 

Her voice draws me from the yard and tells me to turn off the tap

Sweet but not overbearing

A bit of bite at the end

Because she uses green tea- never brown

her voice is my home

It sounds distorted through the phone

 

I guess home doesn't translate too well from 1900 miles away

I guess the super smart people didn't engineer it that way

I guess electrical signals and synthetic sounds

Dont sound like green leaves and warm breeze

same accent and raucous laugh

But its slightly robotic

and sometimes a wire gets kinked her laugh is cut off her face is frozen and

for a moment she is gone again

.

.

hold my breath until

.

.

.

They find the frayed wire and tape it up

And the signal struggles over the passes

Until the tension and threat of disconnection passes

 

But I may conjure her little phrases if I wish

And sometimes if I concentrate

i can almost feel the unbearable humidity

Almost hear the cicada symphony

Which is married to my every memory

almost

 almost

  almost

its almost home here