There's my girl

I lost my grandmother this week. I lost my grandma Lentz, her Aussie accent, her greeting me: there's my girl. I lost my birthday-mate, my brave hero, my reason for watching Wheel of Fortune.

Our last moment together, before I couldn't bear to watch her go farther, was a moment after the seizure that took her to the hospital, after she'd spoken or tried to speak her last words. I knelt by her bed at Hospice, caressed her delicate hand, and said I love you, Grandma. She nodded. Because of course she knew, our bond secured from the day I was born.

I've written about her in more ways than I remembered, in poems and essays trying to capture her story, her spirit, her home. These are a few poems that should speak for themselves, because I can't write anything new yet. I can't write as if she's gone.

Thank You

Lively embarkings
down your driveways,

flimsy grasps for fingers,
limitless: dry goods

displayed in the nook,
naughty flirtations drink

your savings and non-sins,
silly kittens with gum

for eyes, ceilings sag
rain and mold over taught

sheets, silkless drapes
conduct neighbor ramblings,

his winter shorts and orange
shaved legs, dangling

love--your pearlescent
beads, mis-shaped vases:

you could wear white
hair and I'll adore you no

less.

Mariposa, Once

And now, with his Ford permanently

parked, his Veteran flag framed

on your dresser, his cats begging

milk from some other front porch, you go

back to Rockhampton. But not on The Mariposa.

You're the only war-bride

sailing not through seas but skies to find

the white corner ranch, the lopsided

outhouse, even to scream, feel

a spotted toad slick

over toes like it used to--

but you’ve kept his name. You have forgotten

the sound of your mother's goodnight under

his whiskered licks of your ear. Queensland can’t

reclaim you. Only select words lack R's

as always. Absent R’s in a kitchen

stocked with food of your choice alone. Absent

R

leather-stitched on the belt he wore

when he died and dropped

your accent into your trunk of possessions and

locked it.