While Planting Hollyhocks

In the dim green 
I can’t tell what I’m remembering, 
or what’s been handed down. . . .

There’s my silent grandmother on the porch; 
the poplars, pungent odor from bark 
I peeled from twigs. 
Hollyhocks blur through the stirring 
dark leaves. Their blossoms already dry 
make me smell hay-making heat 
drawn to my hair like a burning. 
But the tree I’ve climbed 
is cool enough, and I don’t want 
to answer my mother’s tired voice. . . .
Finished with morning milking, 
she’s wringing clothes from her outdoor Maytag, 
tries to hurry—my father needs her in fields. 

From still branches above the home 
my mother is trying to make of Grandmother’s, 
I first feel it: Mother works too much 
and Grandmother can’t, though she refuses a wheelchair
and changes her appliqued apron 
every day. The calico flowers 
stay starched and clean. 

Maybe I’m afraid of Grandmother, 
who came outside after I did, 
edging her bent joints and falling 
into her chair because knees 
are frozen in one place. The kick of a horse 
began her long stiffening. 
She is never angry or not angry. 

I am somewhere between 
happiness and sadness, somewhere words 
are becoming important, and I feel danger 
in the need to deliver a message 
I do not quite get.