For Townes Van Zandt

when discovered Townes,we too were going out on the highway to

listen to them big trucks whine, hoping that our ramblings through

Canada in a borrowed sedan would show us what we meant to

each other. To the world.

when he married his first wife, she was 21 and not expecting

her new husband to spend their honeymoon locked in her shoe closet

writing what would become waiting around to die

when you called me, I was 21 and not expecting we’d ever speak again after

you took someone else on that same long drive to Toronto. But here

we are listening to him Live at the Old Quarter, Houston,

weaving through the hills of West Virginia

Pancho and Lefty singing our own Fraternity Blues

Somehow addicted to you the way he was addicted to

the airplane glue that sealed all his teeth together before

they cracked them apart with a ball-pin hammer

If I needed you

would you come to me

would you come to me and ease my pain?

Eulogy

These are some of the hardest words I've ever had to write or read. 

R.I.P Margaret "Tootsie" Hamilton

April 22, 1921 -- January 11, 2010

It feels impossible at this point to distance myself enough to write about the entirety of Granny’s life- her beauty, her family, these abstract and massive things that I can barely grasp right now, in my twenties, in my grief. 

It seems more appropriate somehow to talk about the past week, with its too-fast process of losing her. I drove up from school last monday, when I heard that she was in the hospital and I stayed the night with her once or twice. Laying in that bed with the blankets draped over her side I could see the thinness of her legs, the knob of her ankles, and even with the swelling I could see through to her delicate joints. When they rolled her onto her side, her hip rose, loping into the soft curve of her figure-- the same feminine shape of her twenties, the curves that my grandfather fell in love with, the hips that bore the seven girls that were now rotating visiting shifts in the ICU. And still, her physical beauty is such a small part of what made her so remarkable. 

When they adjust her breathing tube,  I see her cry for what I believe is the first time in my life. And I know then the scope of her pain. She was a true stoic-- tearless, fearless, and always without complaint. These are the things she was, in life and death. Just completely graceful. When she held my hand in the hospital, it was the same way she held my hand as a toddler. With all the same acceptance and complete love. That is what she offered everyone she encountered-- a fair shot. 

I was nervous about leaving her, but I had to return to school and work and the hustle of immediate concerns. It never really mattered before that she hadn’t seen my house in Athens, of course I wanted her to, but there was always the promise of spring and talk of a visit to come. But when I got the call that she was gone, all of my surroundings seemed to shift. My house felt colder, emptier, hollow since it had never been blessed with her presence. I think everything will feel that way to an extent; that I will always favor the things she had a part in; enjoy the places she had been. As if her having been there would linger, a gentility that could be felt even after years. 

Just the other day I meant to have her tell me about her wedding day again. About Russles Point and the Banana Cake made with carnation milk. About the time she was terrified waiting for Papa under the marquee of a movie theater in the rain.  These stories and all the others are pieces of her I want to take and hold and shuffle through in passing--  reminders everyday of the person she was. Stories I want to tell my children, who will belong to a generation that will only know the magnitude of her grace through the bits of it I hope we have collected. I can only hope that through proximity to greatness, maybe some of it has rubbed off. I hope that we, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, can try to be those pieces of her that we loved the best. To be strong and gentile, funny and forgiving, faithful and stoic, beautiful and peaceful. I hope that we can love with the fullness and acceptance that she gave to each of us. 

As Tootsie would say:  “I’ll see you on the radio.” 

forecast

Last night was hard
there was no moon to speak of
and the room was dark enough
to hide crying, only one soft
sound gave you away

and when I woke this
morning the sun was on
fire red and drippy like it
had been up all night
crying for us

the city billowed a smoke
made more ominous with
the cold, proof that progress
won't stop for us

the car still frosted over
and in my hurry to leave for
a job that would not wait
I neglected to clear the
windshield

drove the morning streets
peering through a slit in
the frost hoping not to hit
anything- the sun on fire
glaring in the rear view

we have failed in our
honest attempts to
remain the same. We are
no exception to the rule
that everything changes;

nothing will hold still
for us.

And now it is winter, the

windshield too frosty to

show what is ahead of me

as I drive away -- from you

still in a dream. 

12/9

we're really mad here
I'm not sure we're sure
why
but let me tell you that
when a plate hits a plate
in a loading dishwasher
or soapy sink or dry cupboard
we jump
and if you raise your voice
just a little too high, fall
on the ball of your foot
just a little too hard
make your step resound off
the hardwood
you're bound to hear about it

a scream and yell temper
tantrum that lasts only a moment
or, when there is less sun, less money
to go around, more bills to pay,
a silence that lasts much longer

Everything

Everything for you

she says, making

separate dinners 

from no recipe 

for each child

two vegetarians

steak for daddy

the baby won’t eat peas

Everything for you

she says, sweeping

floors she wishes away

in secret, guiding crumbs

from dinners the 

children have eaten

all through the house

Everything for you

she says, with every 

move of her hand,

sweep of a strand

of hair from the face

of a crying child

Everything for you 

because my life is

half over, and yours

is just beginning. 

**

I sit at the 

table reading

lift my feet

as she whisks 

the broom

under them

when everyone

goes to bed, 

I will put down

my book and

do all of 

the dishes 

The Yard Interval

This is a new approach to the topic of home (my overall thesis topic) 

The Yard Interval

Playhouse

Big men came with

hammers and trucks

and pulled the garage 

down. I watched from

the upstairs window 

as they tugged at the slanting

foundation-- the rotted 

white boards and roof shingles

fell. I was too young to be sad, 

to miss the old structure-- just a slab of

concrete now where we could 

roller skate until they build the

new one. Then they tore down 

the picket fence that ran behind

the old garage. I watched

them work, the first jackhammer

I’d seen, in the late afternoon sun

blazing orange behind their shoulders.

When they pour the new foundation, 

we get to put our hand prints in 

the wet concrete with the date

and Daddy took parts of the old

wooden fence and built a play

house for us. We will make mud

pies for dinner and dry them on

the playhouse roof until they’re hard.

Bricks for building memories. 

Leafhouse

In autumn the leaves fall

yellow and orange and brown 

and gather on the small front lawn.

Daddy wants to rake them to the

curb before it rains and they get 

all soggy and kill big spots

of grass, or the snow starts 

and they’re frozen over. But

first they are ours.

We sweep the leaves into the thin

straight outlines of a blueprint:

solid lines for walls, gaps where

there are doors, circles for chairs, 

rectangles for beds and couches, 

and at the very edge of the yard

where the sidewalk looms to the 

street, a half-moon balcony. 

A leaf house of our own design

it will last until the wind picks

up at night. And next year we

will reconstruct it. Exactly the 

same way. 

Porch-house

The patio furniture resides

in the screened-in back porch

its legs are thin, but heavy and

the protective ends have fallen

off so when we move the chairs

around they scratch the floor, a

map of where they’ve been. 

The cement walkway makes a

perfect driveway for our bikes and

we parallel park there between 

important errands-- (the neighbor’s 

yard is the grocery store, the garage

serves as both bank and brake-shop)

Mama put our play kitchen out for

us and every day we live several

days there, sleeping and waking 

driving and parking, shopping and

cooking, breaking and fixing,

a microcosm. We decide when

the sun goes down. 

Papa

I passed a dump truck today

a big blue one that looked strikingly like yours. 

A flagger stopped me in the road 

for an unimportant or imaginary

construction project, and I had

to sit at the feet of the enormous

truck. Watch the men in boots and

jeans and white shirts and remember

that you have been gone for eleven 

years this day.