Streaks of sunlight patterned silver birch columns.
"This is my cathedral," she said.
Hands brown and knobby
like the roots she dug up to show me
brushing off dirt with blunt, gentle fingertips-
"This one makes suds for washing hair."
"This one you crush to put on a wound."
I was young. I don't remember much.
Only her hands
stroking the haze of fur
on the underside of a leaf,
patting the richly moulding blanket of moist
decaying leaves
back into place
like Earth's mother tucking her in for a hard frost.
One finger
as curled and tenacious as a dry oak leaf
pointed to a spray of some survivor of October,
butterfly indigo petals
against shredded browns, grays, golds.
I ran to it,
my own hands eager to clutch.
My great grandmother stopped me.
"If you pick it, it will only die.
I just wanted you to see it."
Afternoon sunlight trickled down,
caressing our necks and cheekbones.
My great grandmother showed me the crook
where she had nested, shivering, in the tree with her rifle.
Now she watched fat bucks flip white tail and flee.
This time she was not hungry.
This page copyright to Sarah Morehouse, January 15, 2000.