Soft, fresh, padded arms,
never tanned, never starved,
freshly powdered, swung their way
to Grandma’s House.

I knew I visited the coolest grandmother
when my tear-free washed, towel-dried arms
pressed out against cool linoleum,
caressing dust bunnies,
not against her grey-haired will,
but according to her modeling.

As though in a race for the first embrace,
as though fighting to front for a chance to partake,
the wrinkled cells of her arms would sag,
spreading out across the floor
beside the glass door.

Our tummies followed suit.

At eye level with the raccoon we were watching
dig for trash, for our left-over scraps on the porch, we lay,
enraptured, in wonder, delighted.
 

If humans were token roles in a hat,
and you plucked me out, saying, “Sing us a song!”
I’d be asked to turn such mundane memories to magic,
to turn these concrete pictures to something new, profound.

I, though, am just one two-armed human
of how many to have thought and longed?

Should I think of grandma and scrawl of death?
Of love? Of aging? What comparisons
are living still to draw?

I only can show what it’s like to be me
and know what it’s like now to be
that scrounging raccoon.