Great-Grandma Fannie
She stood ironing-board straight, as if she had a basket on her head, born 24 years after the Civil War. I am still captivated by her stern, steady ways of working: brown hands gripped the hoe, chopping weeds away from rows and rows of corn and peanuts, a blue apron around her waist, bonnet on her head. She died in 1972. She walked up and down sun-beaten rows, chopped weeds as steady as machines. Her wooden quilting frame took up most of her front room, hands stitching a patchwork. I am fond of unraveling the quilt of this memory. How could I scissor the thread of that time? It remains here.
forty-five years
her house falls
into itself
Reprinted from the book Long Rain by Lenard D. Moore (Berkeley, CA: Wet Cement Press, 2021) with permission of the publisher; ISBN: 978-1-7324369-9-2.