MY GRANDMOTHER RETURNS TO THIS WORLD
as an evergreen. She stands at the top
of the Crimson Trail breathing quietly
like she always did, Logan River
winding below. The wind doesn’t bother
her hair anymore, she doesn’t
pat it or adjust her bra
like she used to, but I know her
by the way she faces the world
straight–backed and solid,
one branch holding itself
a little higher. I want to ask her
about the long veils of widows.
She’ll just shake her head.
Her sisters surround her as always,
each one a cropping of green
reaching out, surveying
the canyon road cutting its way
into the heart of town
where my grandfather,
now a gnarled scrub oak, was once
a banker, and the woman who will
one day be an aspen
posts a letter in the box
and hears it fall, faintly,
onto some dark floor below.
SUNNI BROWN WILKINSON’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Sugar House Review, Cimarron Review, Southern Indiana Review and elsewhere and has been nominated for two Pushcarts. Her debut poetry collection, The Marriage of the Moon and the Field, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2019. She earned an MFA from Eastern Washington University, teaches at Weber State University, and lives in Ogden, Utah with her husband and three young sons.
Read more by Sunni Brown Wilkinson:
Poem in B O D Y
Poem in Cimarron Review
Poem in Small Orange