By the time I was born
both my grandmothers had died,
so I never got to observe
one of them ironing in a hallway
or sitting on the porch
talking to herself about something or other.
I have no poem to write
about their aprons or their hands.
Oh, those hands, caked with flour,
that baked so many pies
it would take a window sill
a mile long for all of them to cool!
I can’t even picture one carrying
her missal to church in the snow
nodding to the sacristan,
while the other one remains confined
to her room for some unknown reason.
Nor can I hear the clicking of their needles.
So reader, you can thank the mortality rate
of nineteenth-century North America
for leaving this poet free to record things
like five birds on a wire,
a lost dog pausing under a street light,
or three lemons doing nothing in a bowl.