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Looking for Nancy
My mother presses her hands
to her checks, mouth ajar,
eyes gathered to their center ridge.
"Goldic," she breathes.
"Oh, Lord, it's Goldic!"
I lean against the rough bark of the hickory
shading the tables spread end to end,
smooth the folds of my new dotted swiss,
a child aloof from women
too old to squeal.
They rush to embrace, hold each other off,
hug again, laughing or crying,
I can't tell which, in a flurry of flowered print.
I watch with the measuring eye
of a twelve-year-old, unable to see
my mother and her cousin as children,
unable to embrace joy
and sadness in one. And now
I reach across the gap
of fifty years looking for Nancy,
longing to grab her hand,
skip through the graveyard,
chasing our boy cousins around the bend.
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