I was teaching my students a creative writing exercise where you try to visualize a person – what they look like, smell like, what they are wearing, and any memories. I wrote about my mother’s father. He is 96 years old.
Grandfather Nye
You are the silent statue
Who stares out the front window
Into the fields of alfalfa.
Your hearing has long left on the
Howling, bitter wind that sweeps through
The open spaces of Southern Idaho.
I remember the times I crawled
Into your bed and cuddled into your
Soap-smelling flannel shirts.
Waking with the dawn, you rose,
Like the sun – slow and steady
To hard work and a quite, content life
Full of bread and milk at meals
Dairy cows, raising calves, state fairs
Watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights.
And so, I sit with you at the window
Holding your wrinkled, sun-spotted hand
And gaze out in peace at the wide world of the past.
I love this photo! Mid – Shave.
Me and Grandpa sitting on the couch with my cousin’s son, his great-grandson. The window I speak of in the poem in to the left. It is a huge window that spans the entire wall.
