Agnes
on missing my grandmother
There is a storm outside, rushing its way across the broken island. Storm Agnes they have named it. I wonder what your storm would be like. How mighty it would be. The things you would blow away. Would you twist and turn and rip the earth onto itself or would you dance your way beyond the green and above the blue, pinching waves to your core as you hum through.
The gale is what I see first, the cover of the BBQ spun out of work and into the sky like a black bird, twisting itself into the distance, in flight but without wings. It is strange to see the unseeable. The wind is the only thing I know to be seen by its gestures. The way I hug it on the summer nights when the sun burns on but turn it away and shield myself from it in the bleak mid winter.
Why do we name such storms? And why is this one not named Eileen? When will your storm pass through and bring me to my windows to see you? To watch you arrive and leave your mark again, on this land, this landscape, this place I know to be my self. To take me into my back yard and hold myself to the willow tree, feeling you there.
What season will I find you in? What day do I need my shoes, the ones to take me as far as you are? If you go anywhere but here, where will I find you?
