Grandmothers

She died in an old

rocker that had carved

faces though worn at the nose

and eye sockets, their walnut hair once grooved, deep

and smooth, and finely hewn, brought bald by

friction, covered by a

blindfold of fingers.

The hands that covered blank

and eerie feminine faces now

clutched tightly in a grasp that

stripped breath from the wooden mouth

long sealed with old varnish and now

flesh. Those hands reflected, white knuckled,

purpled at the center, the astonished look of a dying,

stopping heart and lungs that deflated like

a Depression-era accordion. A last breathless

sonic boom that escaped with barely an utter, a

gasp for a last look at a home with a fifty

year foundation though cracked at its corners.

The tattered velour seat cover held

as many legs as its spindled back that

now held this unmoving figure forward

and back, forward and back: it did not

move but for a slight grade in the foundation

barely breathing the rockers

forward only silent centimeters

at a time.

He walked through the front door

and called: Mary.