by Barbara Nickel
August 4, 1931
Great Deer, Saskatchewan
My grandma makes
a poultice for your chest:
mustard, rags,
flour against a wheeze and cough
incessant as the
dust. She wants to rest,
your lips
chapped creek beds blueing behind the rough
fence of your
crib. Grandpa’s decreed, “Doctor’s
too far, no
sense.” Across the yard his feed pails
jangle, dull
bells tripped by the wind. He’s poured
years into
fields. The wheat will fail and fail.
It’s hot. The
third night – Grandma falls asleep
and dreams you
pick blue harebells near the slough,
you have new
breasts, barn cats spill from your lap,
you smell like
rain. She wakes. Fever’s killed you.
She takes you
out to rock until the sky
is filled with
thunder clouds in your blue eyes.
(First published
in Poetry Ireland Review;
subsequently in The Gladys Elegies
(Coteau Books, 1997)