Thumbprint on Estate Papers

A colabrown whorl I had to taste

on what are now your estate papers--

yes, you were eating chocolate

on a hot day. How like you

who spent the money Dad left

on what's-his-name and all those gowns

still ballroom dancing in my closet,

chiffon and feathers swinging on hangers

in the dark each time I shut the door.

As you were dying you reverted

to the maddening innocence of a child,

asked what you'd done to deserve such pain.

"I've been a good girl," you cried.

You weren't.  Careless and charming

as your own mother who abandoned you,

left you to trail behind your grandfather--

the grizzled lineman for the power company.

Every summer he shaved the lower forty

with a rusty tractor he let you drive.

At your funeral the aunts told how

you once left it rolling to chase a moth,

but I picture you riding high,

rattling and shaking atop baler and rake,

clanking over the scraggy ground--

you double-clutch with bare dirty feet,

your toes spreading to reach the pedals,

jouncing on your patched jeans seat.

At the end of the pass I see you spin

the thin iron wheel with the cool delight

of a sportscar driver, half out of control,

swerving around, and then reeling true

to a plan so absurdly larger than you--

a perfect thumbprint from three miles up.

A shorter version of this poem appeared in The Iowa Review, vol. 29, no. 3. In its current form, this poem won First Prize in Poetry and The Benefactor's Prize at the 2007 Whidbey Island Writers Conference.