among the first to disappear my new patent purse sister’s silk stockings
plates, forks, a sack of potatoes damp handkerchiefs waiting to be ironed
there’s another family living here, confided grandma another family
on the porch mother found her one day pitching clothespins down
the old unused outhouse in our garage did she mistake our shadows
for someone else did we weave in/ out threads in a tatting shuttle
for that kind of losing there is no map water evaporates from the land
it’s gone you don’t know where, even though you saw the haze
one day, mother, father came home from work found her matches in hand
ready to cook pancakes tree branches piled up on the gasoline stove
they packed her things at the nursing home she rocked in her bed
chanted mantras at cracks in the ceiling once she turned, pointed at me
how are your potatoes today and at my silence, to scream those potatoes
those potatoes there at the end of your legs can’t you see them
on the farm, Grandma used to tell stories of her past plain threaded, yet rich
handmade quilts one time, herding cattle I was caught in a flood
my brother raced down the canyon wall grabbed me on his horse saved me
that day, I truly knew he loved me I dreamt of saving her, too would go to visit
wait for her to wake up to see the stallion hidden in the palm of my hand
not wanting to realize she had already been swept out into the water
Margaret Walther is a retired librarian from the Denver metro area and a past president of Columbine Poets, an organization to promote poetry in Colorado. She has been a guest editor for Buffalo Bones, and has poems published or forthcoming in many journals, including Connecticut Review, anderbo.com, Quarterly West, Naugatuck River Review, Fugue, The Anemone Sidecar, Chickenpinata, and Nimrod. She won the Many Mountains Moving 2009 Poetry Contest. Two of her poems published in the online journal In Posse Review in 2010 were selected by Web del Sol for its e-SCENE best of the Literary Journals.
© 2010, Margaret Walther
Halfway Down the Stairs 