Aunt Liona said “when that Spanish moss sway

in the dead-calm air like that it mean the Lord calling someone home”.

She rose from her porch rocker and went in to the kitchen.

I stayed on the porch with Gran-ma, held her hand,

watched for the moss to move. Tall weeds

tapped against the nailed-shut bedroom window,

so weather stained and cob webbed and greasy with age.

“Thistles! Thistles!” Gran-ma’s raspy words were

whispers at first, then filled the dead-calm of my own thoughts.

Her mouth trembled for more words to say; her watery eyes,

still clear and starlit, gazed across the years.

She drifted back just then, to the tilled rows of new fields

where her girl-self flew kites. No cobwebs out there.

She smiled and let out more twine.