First Place, Poetry, NMW Awards 15

Carolyn Moore

Mrs. Wold Writes a Friend in North Dakota
Copyright 2003 by Carolyn Moore



This poem honors a voice of my grandmother. Our family relegated her to the role of a sweet, frail icon, propped up to officiate at our gatherings. When I overheard her phoning a childhood friend, however, I discovered a strong, illusion-free woman who merely tolerated our need to view her in our misguided way.
- Carolyn Moore




Tomorrow, my reckoning with eighty.
At the first shriek in my joints
I will rise to walk the lane
as far as the new intersection
where tires whine through rain
and dry the pavement out of season.

I came to Oregon a prairie girl.
Sixty years of Douglas fir
have not forested my blood.
For you, late October arcs blue
over plains penciled with stubble.
Sun and snow promise sharp relief.

Here, my birthday falls with leaves
not content to blaze and vanish.
Maple and blackberry go limp with rain
and cling with no shame through spring.
Clouds rob winter of distinctions
the shadows would keep in stock.

The young do not worship weather
and are not permitted to hear
her prophecies that our old bones
confide to one another.
The young believe the senses fail--
I tell you, they conspire.

I now hear every neighborhood Goth
who plunders my walnut trees.
I can smell the blackberry vines' plot
to take the south fence next spring.
I have tasted loneliness and solitude
and know which to keep in my cupboard.

From my window I no longer read
the red whims of my mailbox flag.
Yet I can translate each line
chanted by the distant skeletons
of frame houses circling the spot
where Strom's barn still stood last May.

Let me tell you about tomorrow.
At twilight I slice the cake
and compliments of my annual visitors.
On the altar of my birthday
in-laws will sacrifice themselves
to cruel dresses and ties.

Nothing I say will free children
nailed by parents to chairs.
Forks will scuttle after crumbs.
I will dig from tissue this year's teacup.
I will hold to light its saucer
as though old prayers were answered there.

Carolyn Moore works on her manuscript awarded the C. Bailey Hamilton Fellowship in Poetry from Literary Arts, Inc. She is enrolled in Fairleigh Dickinson University's MFA program.