When I visited

my Aunt and Uncle's farm in

which my mother had been born

and lived, I slept in a white iron

bed with lumpy white paint.

In the morning the chickens

were more shrill than the distant

trains and they shifted keys.

Out back there was a Spring house

where, if you threw it a worm,

an old trout would rise.

 

My Uncle spoke crossly,

"Co Boss," he said calling the animals

and once when a horse whinnied

I thought it was he, starting to talk.

I told you that, he would

half whine half complain at dinner

and I heard his strange

throat clearing in my dreams.

He did accounts at a roller top

desk with a rattler skin on the wall behind.

My aunt had a straight-nosed profile

and mounds of nesty hair and let me

drop Japanese pellets to flower

in a blue glass bowl.

 

She cooked pancakes on the top of the stove

and I loved the barn smell

and the wood smell

and after she died

I found a post card written in 1912

by a cadet at West Point.

"Then I will never

see you again," it said.

She kept it in a worn silk case in all her bureau things.

 

copyright Ellen Tifft