An Autumn Memory

She Sat in Autumn

My grandmother sat in autumn

Shelling pecans at the kitchen table.

At mid afternoon

The children were at play in the yard

Parents, at work.

She made herself useful

Preparing a sack of pecans

That would go to candies and pies

Destined for holiday enjoyment.

Her fingers remained nimble

Though hands were darkened

By age spots;

Skin wrinkled by

Time and duty.

She thinks back to younger days 

(My childhood heart knew nothing of her sorrow).

So many years a widow,

She wonders what might have been

If that fiery Irishman, ten years her senior,

Had only had a stronger heart.

She hurts for her son –

The favored one –

Whose life spiraled into alcohol and bitterness.

“How did you keep yourself whole

And loving?” I asked

In this autumn-tinted memory,

“So that all I ever saw

Was gladness and light?”

“I had to welcome what life brought,”

Her thin fingers grasped the nutcracker

To loose another autumn kernel,

“I had to be here to shell pecans.”

                                     Charles Kinnaird



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