Red Moonwalking Woman

Red Moonwalking Woman
by Diane Glancy


Grandmother said her grandmother
unwrapped the knives & forks each meal,
backward-walking to the cabin she left.
She remembered her dishes on the shelf,
a book, her feather bed.
The way sun dusted the floor.
Soldiers could come again & push her
on a trail in the dead of winter.
After the removal
she started again from nothing —
a twig to stir the stew rations.
Old Lot's wife,
salt pillar of the field.
It took years to collect bowls & kettles again.
Grandmother wiped the serving spoons,
closed them in a drawer.
The potato-sack curtains
trudged in the wind,
the spotted wallpaper, the long trail they marched.
It was more than a hundred years
but we sat in the kitchen
waiting for the squeak of the back door,
old shawl around our shoulders,
the bundle of supper in our belly.


Copyright © Diane Glancy