I finally finished my Grandma Jones diorama! It goes with a poem I already published, but just so you don't have to go back a million posts--here it is again. So sorry for the repeat--but I'm pretty pleased with Grandma Jones and her tuna sandwich. When you pull the lever, she turns around and offers it to you.

The Day

On a day very much like this one, only long ago

I woke late--to a sun yellow as a fried egg and the music of small town traffic,

to the slow bass decrescendo of big rigs, the staccato braking of the locals,

and the odd happy honks of howdy coming through the blind.

And to Grandma's thick shoes pacing off the distances between table and sink

and the white enamel stove where bacon spit.

That particular morning I had no plans, no expectations.

I would spend some of it poking a stick into minty ditch mud

and drawing pictures with it on the walk.

I would stalk the neighbor's cat through the garden

and bounce my fingers along the fence wires as I passed.

I would dare myself to walk all the way to the tracks to feel the terror,

the rush and rumble

of the freight cars clacking the marrow in my bones.

I would be brazenly disobedient,

like the several drowned children Grandma cataloged,

and dip my skinny legs into the rushing, icy canal.

I would make just wide enough circles

around the horses and cows

tied to fenders and phone poles along my journey.

I'd watch their quiet eyes watch me.

I'd talk to them in a secret language.

I would sit cross legged on the porch

at eye level with Grandma's rolled down stockings,

held in the middle of her shins with rubber bands,

And listen to her gossip while she shelled the peas--

their pop, their pinging into the bowl.

I would eat supper with Grandma and Grandpa and Sherm

around the table set with a flowered cloth and melamine plates

under a yellow bulb made flickery by its halo of winged things.

There would be some kind of meatloaf I would not try

and a neat square of cherry jello with a smear of Miracle Whip.

There would be catsup.

And then an evening sitting on the porch

my legs dangling in the soft air

hovering warm just above the grass.

And there would be junebugs and crickets and sprinkler music

and behind the green screen door with its silver hook,

the muted sounds of television.

Out in front of me was the whole world painted in backlit blues and greens.

And me feeling it all as if I had no skin.

Then finally back between the cool sheets

and listening again to trucks going by--

My ten year old self so innocent of the fact that this was it--

The Day--

the one of all my thousands of days that forever, and for the rest of my life,

I would run to.