FOR MY GRANDMOTHER STORY

I want to thank you
for my bones,
for my abundant flesh,
for the memories
my body tries
to tell.

I never knew you,
we barely met,
but I have tried
to trace you through
the raveled thread
of my life.
I went to your
country and know
now who you were,
though I cannot exactly
say it.
I stood on the ground
where you must have walked,
where John came courting.
He stole you away from
another man,
is how they put it,
as though you were
a horse or a jar
of candy.
Not someone with volition
of your own.
“They went across the
river and never
came back,” my cousin
said.
I knew then the life
I have lived, without
people or place,
went back to that.
She made it sound
like you walked out
with dinner on the
stove, when they shot
his brother and he had
to leave.

I’m glad I didn’t know
how they felt about him,

(no stanza break) before I went back
bearing his name,
which I had thought
of as yours.
That’s why I took it.
If nothing else they
never forgave him
for taking you off,
but more than that –
he was a rounder,
even then,
and we both know it.
Not the kind they want you
to marry.
You walked right out the door
leaving everything
that was yours.
They went across the river
and they never came back.

I want to thank you
for my crazy heart,
it must have come
from you.
For the bones,
in my face,
which I thought was his
until I met your
clan. It came, I
guess, from that ride
across the Mississip.

I want to thank you
for my crazy heart,
for the things my blood
remembers.
I only knew the later
tales, the religious
woman who wore
long skirts.
I always figured
my spiritual fervor
was yours, handed down
through my mother,
who told me nothing
of your youth,
perhaps that was
your secret.

Aunt Betty and
Uncle John Austin
they call you still,

(no stanza break) like you just left.
“All part of the legend,”
they say, “of John Austin,”
referring to the day
Grandpa rode his horse
into court.
I had heard it was the
church. I guess
Grandpa rode his horse
wherever he wanted to get
and took what he liked
when he got there.

I want to thank you
for my bones,
for my abundant flesh
my crazy heart,
for all my blood
remembers.

All Souls Days, 1999