[expanded version of the poem 2022]

Is this a poem?
How could I tell?
Are these feelings?
Is this a life?

I recapitulate my grandmother:

Her parents were wealthy farmers in Germany
but “They didn’t like the Kaiser,”
so they moved to Nebraska — rich farmers
on good land.

Adventurous spirit, she went to college in Chicago
whence my grandfather whisked her away to Florida,
promising an agricultural wonderland.

It was!

Florida grew any/everything like magic.
She picked and dressed and cooked miracles.
I got to crank the black cast iron separator
that turned fresh milk from the cow
into milk, cream and butter.

Pop read Kipling to me
and told me of Yutch,
the idiot on the survey team
with whom he crossed the continent
and avoided World War I.

Pop taught me to fish and hunt
and let me teach myself to read.
He was a good man in a bad time.

Granny could do anything.
But then Pop died.

For a decade she traveled the world
seeing every sight and bringing home mementos
but all she really wanted to remember was him
and when that longing couldn’t be distracted
she turned to daytime TV and junk food,
renouncing her life.

Her life got even
by hanging on to her for 103 years.
Finally she refused to eat, and we let her go.

So today, after two years of plague
and a decade of undetected fascist takeover
and a lifetime of burning fossil fuels
I grow numb from watching the southern sky
for fireballs
and the news for climate catastrophe
and daytime TV starts to appeal
and junk food starts to look good
and I’m tired of being ashamed
for doing too little to stop this
and I wonder when I’ll stop eating.

(20 March 2022)