Steadily waiting against a branch, with a curl caught in a berry twig, I called out her name.
My grandmother kneeled beside me, knees smudged brown, and green
proof of our morning labor dropping seedlings into the corner garden.
Snapping the culprit, who claimed wisps of my baby hairs, gooseberries fell
plopping off my grandmother’s red painted toes.
She handed me a homemade crawdad net:
a whittled stick, tied to a circular wire, attached to a hair net.
We walked down to Foxfire Pond
far from the brazen bush with sour berries of deceit.
I caught three—threw the tiny lobsters back
in hopes that good deeds meant something.
Cast in mud my left hand, inside of her right hand
walking back down Two Mile Road:
freshly stacked horse manure, and honeysuckles
half painted barns under happy willows,
my grandmother yelling at the stray dog sniffing behind our black and brown, pavement sifted feet.
We took to the back porch underneath the yellow awning, her in the white rocking chair
my bottom marked with rainbow chalk, sitting on the freshly painted concrete,
snapping buckets of green beans.
We sat in Appalachias silent summer
tying June bugs to strings
lighting up window sills, with lighting bug jars
sprinkling salt on top red/green rhubarb stalks,
never wiping away the stains
scattering colors like seeds.