Grandmother
The bay’s little waves licked the ankles
as her poled net loitered through the warm shallows,
seaweed caught and weeping from its bent rim.
Home again, ripples from the pail told the story.
When she rolled her trousers above her aged knees,
you knew where she was headed—across the milkweed field,
into the pines, past a single cactus and the oval frame
of massed catkins, to reach the wide open bay of pure joy.
—Eva Salzman
From the anthology Making for Planet Alice, Bloodaxe Books Ltd., Copyright © 1997. Used by permission of Eva Salzman. Collections by Eva Salzman: Bargain with the Watchman, Oxford University Press, Copyright © 1999; Double Crossing, Bloodaxe Books Ltd., Copyright © 2004; Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English, Seren, Copyright © 2008. Photo by Mohamed Osama, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.
"When she rolled her trousers above her aged knees"
What a dear image. Reminds me of my grandma talking about wearing her "petal pushers" in the summer.