Dry bones in Minnesota
You’d stand there arms crossed
in front, gathering your waist
with floured hands, a pause
from oven to table, your silhouette
perfectly framed in stained glass,
staring out over potted pansies,
eyes following the sagging line,
a clothesline too close to ground,
bird bath rimmed in chickadees,
dry bones and brittle branches,
skin cracked and peeling -
old birch out back reminds you,
your own sore dusted marrow.
You’d bend to tender roses hand picked
for you and he, now Grandpa’s Place,
a place which claims my roots,
in the yard out back among Queen Anne’s lace.
Thinking back now -
to earlier days of gathering;
lilies-of-the-valley, Becky, little bells &
cockleshells, kindling, and purple violets
placed within your favorite vase
upon the kitchen window shelf,
with little purpose hands,
where your tender gaze would rest
oh Grandma
how I miss you, and all of Braham’s nest.
Janet Leigh Dowd
3 comments:
Not that the Vandersons, pioneer couple of Minnesota that they were, were also connected personally to Ms. Leigh--but I liked their faces, and those faces seemed to compliment Janet's lovely and sad poetic memories.
Glenn
It still makes me choke up reading this piece dedicated to my grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar A. Olson, Sr. of Braham, MN, a little paradise about 70 miles north of the twin cities; a town my grandfather helped found many years ago. I think they still celebrate a day out of the year in his honor. He did so much for the farmers & townsfolk in that area and everyone knew who he was, except for us when we were kids, tee hee, even when we'd parade in single file into his bank just to say hello and leave, with a silver dollar in each of our hands. After Church on some Sundays Grandpa would take all of us (and whoever was there at the time) to the Park Cafe for lunch.
My Grandma, nee Emma Stege, had the most influence over me as a child. My 3 sisters and I spent many weekends with our grandparents and they took us out to their cottage every summer on Rush Lake. She's the one who taught me to fish and she had rules about fishing. You couldn't go fishing with her unless you scaled and cleaned out (gutted) your own fish. I was the only one of the kids that could go fishing with Gram. :) I treasured the time spent in that little boat, out in the middle of the lake waiting for a bite. We could sit there for hours without talking, just listening to the sounds of nature surrounding us. I loved to help Grandma on weekends while she baked bread, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, Angel Food cakes (1 plain & one frosted). I'd help her do laundry and even iron. She wasn't real talkative but matter-of-fact and straightforward in her speech, much like myself, but when the music started... O BOY! Then she'd laugh, sing, play the organ, piano, or her blues harp while my Mom accompanied her on the piano/organ. They both knew how to play both instruments, plus Gram loved playing her blues harp and Mom also played clarinet. I play the horses. (just kidding :) Gram also loved to dance, not the fox trot (prim and proper, a dance more suited to Grandpa, Stoic Sr., reticent Swede and very business-like), oh no, Grandma did the polka! Boy, we had the best of times. Until we moved to CT; then it became the worst of times. A whole other story.
What I started out to say is that I could have written a more proper poem for my proper Grandparents, one that went into their privileged life, one his business colleagues would have gushed over - but that's not how I viewed them, and it certainly wasn't the way they viewed themselves. My grandfather was a humble man from humble beginnings but because of his business acumen and personal aura/charisma, he built his wealth from the bottom up. And when he was in the position to do so, he helped wherever it was needed. (I'm crying now. What a dope, see?)
The only poetry contest I've entered online, was the 2007 Poetry Super Highway Contest. I submitted 3 poems, I think, and DBiM won 2nd place.
The author, Kenneth Tindall, was so taken by this poem that he did an in-depth analysis of the first stanza, line-by-line, entitled The Historical Phantasmatic and the Semantics of Childhood - An Analysis, and it was eerily spot-on. If you'd like to read it, I'd be happy to share it with you.
Again, thanks so much for posting this piece, which is probably one of my favorite poems. You may repost any poem of mine, Glenn. You definitely do them justice with your accompanying pictures and asides..:)
BTW, I'd be happy to stop cluttering up your beautiful site with my long-winded nostalgic reveries and just email stuff like this, if you'd like. I never meant for this comment to be this long. Just saying.. :)
Janet:
If you notice, most of my comments on your site, and others, are very "long-winded". I appreciate your sharing, and love every word of your responses. We probably will never meet, and yet, through the magic of these blogs, we can get to know each other, to some respect, and share a fellowship of artists; a poet's pain and joys.
Thanks for the permission to reprint your dynamic and emotional poems. It certainly doesn't hurt to get our stuff "out there".
My grandparents, on my mother's side, were very important to me as well; especially my grandfather, who was an artist, rabble rouser, liberal, muckraker, sometimes poet, and the best fisherman, hunter, and woodsman any boy could have for a grandpa.
Glenn
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