Ninety Two

The grandchildren don't visit 
as often as they did
when she lived
in the snug brick house on the hill,
where bright landscapes sprawled
from window ledge to horizon's edge,
and none hung, redundant,
on pine paneled walls.

This modern woman,
of self cleaning
electric appliance 
Tang and Pop Tart
fluorescent lighted 
Picasso-print 50s chic,
communed with the panorama
over morning coffee and evening nap,
from wife, to mother, to widow,
from hillside, to strip mine, to strip mall,
from oil-slick stone road to screaming interstate,
from lightning storm to white out,
from housewife to matriarch.

She turned old one day
and was driven away,
after a fall, a mis-step, 
a moment's shameful distraction,
to sit with the other penitents
in an unfamiliar place
where children cook for her, and bathe her,
and talk about her in the third person.
"Why, I'm right here," she should say,
but she won't complain, 
doesn't want to make a fuss.

So she fades back, feigns sleep, sleeps,
and dreams of her husband,
the grandfather taken too soon from the little ones,
of how the clock ran down despite her,
and how the mountains and valleys
in the living painting
just beyond the window 
at the back of the little electric house
look so glorious
that she wishes everyone could see them
as clearly as she sees them right now.

Dedicated to my grandmother, who embodied grace.