Elizabeth Riseden
My rear
rests on your labor, Grandma.
The
needlepoint piano bench seat---roses,
lilies---stitched
for posteriors' posterity
still
serves well. My fingers encourage
sound
from the keyboard, you provide
praise.
With your voice
in my
memory, I'll teach others.
Your
wash board---small, for church linens,
the
wooden stir stick---both
passed
to mother
then to
me. Silken,
warped
from tons
of
soaked sheets, boiled and wringered.
These
grace my roll top desk.
How
broad your body, how Victorian
your stern, mostly silent enforcement
of
right. Your copious lap held kids,
ill
miners, broken hearts.
Your
feet stepped with lightness in a Danish
dance---Ve,
ve, ve, ve---the words and tune
funny.
That
corseted frame, short beneath
its
amplitude moved like a light
pillar,
dervished through poverty
pioneer
isolation, contained the flames
that
nearly consumed you.
With
five children
you
wouldn't let scarring take you out.
You
tamed your desert, bringing
church
and cleanliness,
determination,
faith.
They
kept you observing---
a
couple's twins, a lion's TV
snarl
after you lost
sight.
Even then you waved
to
characters on
Our Gal
Sunday.
Every
day you gave advice
when you
couldn't crochet
or knit
or embroider or civilize
us with
anything but your will.
