In the shade of the cotton grove often we had met and talked, your burrowing hands in the ground, your sailor arms when you arrived and the canons let fall.

Her hand sits within mine from a nervous frozen moment, the moment I was told what we had shared, my hands on the table, grandmother smiling somewhere often.

Do you see her in that mysterious form is she lovely and then the war, the great destroyer, the trucks that go back and forth from Florida.

In your grey wool trousers, the garden calls from outside, the basement dark and dreary on a Saturday night, the spider webs, the jars, I will go and work in the garden, the rings of years like trees and stained within, the furniture you often brushed, the lingering scent of the old world.

I hear the reverberations of your deep voice, the office closet, the Florida polyester, the flowing garment, the hands of another held within the fading fabric, the clip pinned to my crisp starched cotton.

May you be warm grandfather beneath the brocade of a thousand undying smiles, where the sun never rests her head.