My Grandmother Loved by John McKernan — Amarillo Bay™ Literary Magazine

My Grandmother Loved
by John McKernan John McKernan

John McKernan is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press His most recent book is selected poems entitled: Resurrection of the Dust (available from Amazon).

To feast on silence
She sat for hours staring at a cherry tree

The table she sat at
Grows longer
Every day it snows

Her hearing aid
Never worked
When someone found her glasses
She broke them again with a hammer

Lilac perfume kept the room
Seven degrees too warm
And the army blanket
She mistook for a shawl
Confused a moth ball with a sugar cube

No syllables
Explain the word quiet
More than the letters of her name
Engraved in granite
On a sloping hillside
In Omaha Nebraska

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My Grandmother Loved by John McKernan John McKernan John McKernan is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press His most recent book is selected poems entitled: Resurrection of the Dust (available from Amazon).

My Grandmother Loved
by John McKernan John McKernan

John McKernan is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press His most recent book is selected poems entitled: Resurrection of the Dust (available from Amazon).