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POETRY

Charlotte, kneeling in her garden, Denham, Indiana, July 1978

“Charlotte, kneeling in her garden …” read by Donna Kathryn Kelly.

My grandma, bent at waist
in the rural sun
patrolled the rows of potatoes,
supervised my reckless digging
not far from the sandy-sides
of an Indiana dune;
knelt down in the earth,
armed with a garden fork,
showed me how
to prep the removal,
tracing a halo in the dirt
along the edges of the plant.

And then she’d tug,
swift, decisive,
so as to not inflict damage.

Let the vine die first,
she’d say,
That one’s not ready yet.

She wore a violet scarf
bordering her brow line,
tied under her resolute chin,
the same one she wore to Sunday Mass
at Saints Cyril and Methodious
in the same fourth-row pew
with my grandfather,
who did not talk about the War.

And they made the sign of the cross,
And they genuflected
And they believed and believed:

just like the golden-haired man
in the moody garden,
hologram-transfigured,
suffering, but serene,
in the front room of the farmhouse,
silent under a steel sky,
praying for a different outcome,
on the night before he was executed.

My grandma knelt in the same fourth-row pew
on the day of my grandfather’s funeral.
She wore a purple pantsuit,
her head bowed, covered.

It was a score later,
but it was the same scarf:
The same thing that lasts,
The longing and the will,
The believing and believing.

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Donna Kathryn Kelly’s poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies such as Pasque Petals, Southern Arizona Press, Oakwood, The Gilded Weathervane, Snapdragon, and North Dakota Quarterly. In 2022, she received an Honorable Mention in the 91st Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (Non-Rhyming Poetry Competition). Kelly is the author of The Cheney Manning Series, a collection of suspense novels about a criminal defense attorney turned amateur sleuth who investigates homicide cases in northern Illinois. The Cheney Manning Series is available for purchase on Amazon.com. You can find out more about Kelly @donnakathrynkelly.com.

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