Thursday, May 12, 2011

Denial



Denial

By Patricia Frolander


He called it “his ranch,”
yet each winter day found her beside him
feeding hay to hungry cows.


In summer heat
you would find her in the hayfield—
cutting, raking, baling, stacking.


In between she kept the books,
cooked, cleaned
laundered, fed bum lambs.


Garden rows straight,
canned jars of food
lined cellar walls.


Then she died.
I asked him how he would manage.
“Just like I always have,” he said.

2 comments:

Sue said...

This so reminds me of my father's mother: skin like shoeleather and hands that could wrestle a horse and plow as well as rock a child.

Christina said...

I love to gaze at old Kentucky faces and wonder at their stories. You can see signs of hard years, hard work, hard times. Traces of a ravaged beauty and sheer determination too.