Grandmother's Catskill Cloudburst Death-Bed Scene
by Noah Feldman
Bells in the black of the bee-bonnet brain
knelled out a smile as the down-song rang;
her cossack husband, twenty years dead,
stood at the window-sill and sang.
My mother's mother in her mother's bed,
in her father's house, in her grandson's town,
smiled while her lover in his uniform
called from the window for her to come down.
The last twenty years she kept from the light
and read her book, and gave me toys,
and let the cob-webs climb the walls,
and shook her strap at the neighbor-boys.
In my grandmother's house in my father's town
in my mother's warmth and my private nook,
I would think of my brother laughing in bars
while she peered through a glass at her pebbled book.
I remember a storm like hooves,
galloping out of the hills and down,
and she stood at the window-sill and called
while my brother guzzled beer in town.
"Cherry-boy, Cherry-boy, come by me,
I'm scared of all dis t'under …”
But the clouds blew off and the hills unrolled
and the sky crept out from under.