j.d. whitney | grandmother

Poetry Dispatch No. 57 | February 27, 2006

Grandmothers…a spirit-force to be reckoned with, within us. Where the writer must sometimes go, fortuitously, digging into dry, into wet earth,…the odor of decay, fingers bruised and muddied, grasping for a talisman which speaks in stone, dust, worms, shards—uncovering old stories of who we are , what might become of us. Grandmothers are buried deep inside , deep beneath the earth, tangled, blindly branching deeper still…persistently sending out little white roots, green shoots. Shadow and light. Grandfathers brood in the dark, silent woods. Their long backs turned to us, their arms stretched to the heavens. Norbert Blei

Grandmother by J.D. Whitney

always

comes

when

people make

fire

&

music together.

Sits

in the

not quite dark

beyond

edge of

firelight

near

where

little ones dance.

It is

their

feet

Grandmother moves.

from WHAT GRANDMOTHER SAYS, March Street Press, 2001