A Drive Through Marysville

You sat like a weak-kneed breeze
with eyes full of decision and
a spine oozing with stregnth
Two miles from the old town
we passed the spectre walls
where you and now dead siblings
came of age
The wood is flaking, blurred, and colorless
It was once a rainbow, you thought,
A house surrounded by genteel cement arms
so rare during the Depression
Now it knows the meaning of that era
You blinked at the ghosted walls

and again
Seeming to long after twilight

We pass the plot where lies
her father's century old corpse and
she wonders if it isn't unfortunate that
long-life runs in her family

The wrinkles cutting her face
twisted out illegible words
and in an instant she became, in my mind,
that precious cedar from my childhood
which found comfort in a desolate home
amid a hillside bed of crimson lava rock
What vegetation had any business growing there!
Yet life came fruiting from its boughs and
grace brooding in its roots

Further down the road we
descended into the belly of Warm River
It sang her to sleep as the
new generation played on its cold, shallow banks

For my dear Grandma Blake