Old Granny Teaches Magic
A pair of poems from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas
Drought
What is soWhat is so innocent as grazing cattle?
What is soIf you think about it, it turns into words.
Ruth Stone, “Always on the Train”
There is the languid chewing, small twitch of ear
to rid a fly, redirect breeze, capture sound.
Her udder begins to fill with hints of onion grass,
wild garlic; the sweet rye long withered to straw
by the great flame back of sun.
She lifts her heavy head, burp of cud;
everywhere herd mates begin to lie down.
The wives’ tale is cattle on the ground mean rain.
But all we sweep from doorways is dust.
The field is umber and crushed under the belly weight
of hip-sprung cows. We shade our eyes and scan
a vast and empty milk-white sky.
Old Granny Teaches Me Magic
Sky-tall, hawk-sighted, she moved through
forest shadow plucking stems, stamens, and petals
for her woven reed basket. Ground green potions
to cast out ague, banished warts with twine and incantation.
She cocked her ear to the rain crow’s caw
and told me to hear; sighted down a gnarled finger
and said name that tree, pinch that flower,
taste that fruit. Moss will stop bleeding.
A hickory switch will find water.
The cat-of-the-mountain will cry out a death.
At ninety-six, stove-in, blind but not huddled, it cried for her.
I sit at this desk, this computer, a thousand miles
from the mountains—but still my eye casts out the window
looking for an analgesic leaf to chew,
some moss to lay over my heart.
Linda Blaskey is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over. She is author of four poetry collections, two of which are collaborations, and was awarded the 2022 Masters Fellowship in Poetry from Delaware Division of the Arts. She spent most of her childhood in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.