for the Grammas

We lean forward to fit into the camera’s lens, all seven

of us squashed together. Our weekly gathering

celebrates returns: of spring, of the snowbirds.

Of my own return from serious illness.

But standing in that spring field with my friends, the scarlet voice

of poppies screamed the sun’s too strong, and as I ran

my fingers gingerly over buttercups, I thought, they are not

as I remember. A nugget of fear lodged in my chest.

 

Months later as I look at my smiling face in the photo,

I recall how awkward that first get-together was for us all.

No one said anything except how good to have me back,

how good I looked. We were all adjusting to my croaky voice,

loss of hearing, of mobility. While some returned

from vacation, I returned from the dead.

 

I feel again the aloneness of that first excursion, how I was

a stranger to myself as well as to them; the tears shed

that I’d never be the same. It was true. I look no different

but carry, like Persephone, indelible marks

from the underworld—caution and distance,

less certainty. Less energy.

 

But as I write this poem, I thank the Grammas:

Their cards that fill a book. The patchwork quilt

made for my homecoming from the ICU, each square,

an individual hand imprinted within. A wall hanging

in my bedroom now, I look to those hands, 

wake to them yet, each morning.

 

From Gathering the Harvest (Bellowing Ark Press, 2012).

This poem first appeared in Passager.

Used here with the author’s permission.