The Only Words Of My Bryson Grandmother

Bert Almon

Her cloche hat is pulled down to her eyebrows
and the fur collar on her cloth coat
would normally count as trim. But today
there is a rare frost. The boy beside her,
my father, wears knickerbockers
and lace-up boots, and I can count every hook:
the camera gives eternal life to fashion.
The background shows an ornamental plum tree.

The only words of my Bryson grandmother
I've ever read are written on the back of the photo:

Don't I look a sight
but the icycles on plum tree
is very pretty

I would not correct her words
except to say that hoar frost
is so rare where she lived
that few people have the name for it.

I could not correct her words,
knowing she left school at fifteen
to marry a cotton farmer,
knowing she wrote mostly to her mother,
who was in the mental hospital
and therefore reputed to have died long before.
My grandmother would die without pretense,
of angina pectoris--meaning simply pain in the chest-
as my father would in his own time,
at forty-seven, three years short of her span.

I am glad a frosty morning called for a picture.
In an hour or two the sun that made them squint
would melt the frost, send water
dripping from the branches
and down the trunk to the ground.

I would correct everything
but nothing can be corrected.

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Bert Almon's works copyright © to the author.