She was my father’s teacher at the night school class.
She went to college for two years
and didn’t notice how lonely she was
until she met Daddy and fell into the
She knows how to keep a home,
she knows how to make things
She knows how to smooth things between two
And she knows how to come into a home
and not step on the toes of a ghost.
I still feel grateful she didn’t make cranberry sauce
last month, at the first Thanksgiving we
Louise made sweet potatoes and green beans,
and turkey, and two pies, pumpkin
sighed shut and Daddy walked with Louise instead of
out to Ma and Franklin’s grave,
where he let Ma know his intentions (1).
And Ma’s bones didn’t object.
1 intentions: Decision (to marry Louise)
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. Scholastic, Inc., 1997, pp. 223–224.