The summers in Maine remind me;
the arid landscape
and the weathered farmhouses
are suggestive of Christina.
I see her, whose persistence
never faltered once.
She, who crawled up the hill
to the barnyard every afternoon.
And if I proffered her my hand,
she'd simply say, "beware of pity."
She, who knew the tawny grass
as intimately as a caterpillar.
The daily rituals of an invalid
can be the most affecting.
Errands becomes privileges
as the ankles begin to atrophy.
Had she such a routine?
You'd need ask the river—
with whom she'd communed
everyday since a little girl in bows.
Or perhaps, you should implore
the wide, ocher grasslands
that often scraped her knees
and lacerated her palms.
In the uncertainty of polio,
Every morning she woke,
laid her sundries beside the tub,
and cinched her pink dress
around her thinning waist.
Until the last, the saturnine light
peeked at her through the clouds;
the graying sky bid her come.
Her elbows gave out beneath her,
she unclenched her hands,
and then—weary to be winged—
she sublimated in the fields.
