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On the Untimely and Recurring Demise of My Late, Great Grandmother

Grandmothers die three or four times
a semester. Ask any teacher.

They sometimes all belong to one
slow-witted student whose wisdom

is never found in books. They die
on glowing fall days when summer’s

fingers still tease and tickle,
when the warmth that was returns to taunt

the young and set the woods on fire.
They’re buried on a winter morning

with no snow, cold biting the wet cheeks
of survivors. A day when comfort

lies late in bed, an extra quilt,
a cup of tea, no need to stir.

But often they book the spring flight.
With the first burst of forsythia,

grandmothers queue up all over
the country. They all long to lie

beneath that yellow-green spring
where the children of their children

so thoughtlessly dispatch them.
And if they knew, they’d understand.

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Ann Curran is author of the recently released Me First (Lummox Press) and Placement Test (Main Street Rag). Her poetry has appeared in Rosebud Magazine, U.S. 1 Worksheets, The Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Blueline, Third Wednesday, Notre Dame Magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes, Commonweal Magazine, and others, as well as a number of anthologies. She was a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Catholic, and a longtime editor of Carnegie Mellon Magazine. She is a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop in her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.