I blame you, Grandmother, for the
asparagus I steam tonight
remembering how you sent me to
pluck it
from that slope behind your house
that leaned
toward the apple orchard. They were winsap, I think,
and red delicious, never ripe when
we visited.
Snap asparagus at the root, you
said, showing me only once,
or was it twice? I was so young and didn’t use a basket
but grasped them like a bouquet of
blue bells.
You snapped them into small pieces,
scrubbed
then boiled the life out of
them. I didn’t know until later
how you ruined the taste with water
and salt
and remember the asparagus, still,
as perfect.
It is your fault, Grandma, the way
I blithely believe
Providence will provide an
abundance of asparagus and apples.
That crate you sent each fall kept
the doctor’s away.
The applesauce, the apple pies and
fritters,
they were all sweet. And so I forgive your dreadful bible verses
and the singsong hymns you tucked
us into bed with,
hoping to correct our ill
manners, and to punish us
for playing in the tractor sheds
and in fields near the pickers sheds
where we saw just how desolate life
could be. I forgive you
for telling me not to play with the
children I played with anyway.
It is your fault, Grandmother,
teaching me to pick
the wild green sprouting amidst the
dying grass. I forgive you
for calling me bad seed, for
thinking I caused more trouble
than you could ever pray me out of,
even after that summer
I sat stalk-still and you painted
so much majestic hope into my still life.
That summer you swatted at the bees
settling on the butter,
decreed Satan created them, not
you. Grandma, it is your fault
I think your God is small. He sinned when he erased our faces
from your memory. But Grandma, your scripture is worthless
if I am now just some stranger
peeling apples at your sink.
I never want to quit being your
last regret, your shinning disappointment.
