The old ones told stories, snapping beans.
My grandmother's hands with nails like moons.
We shuddered the flies, and our skins drank in the summer,
and I saw her a child in the West Virginia mountains.
And the locusts, who were sometimes crazy, sang
so that if you listened to them on purpose,
it became the deafening buzz of high tension wires.
That day was whole and ripe.
That day was sweet, like the shoepeg corn she would put up. Later.
Her silver cans of snuff were magic, the almanac cryptic.
Her mojo hanging around her like musk.
A witch, but no witch,
just hillbilly, just indian,
like I am witch and no witch.
And she said it was a-gonna rain and she would be right,
and what I remember most would be her perfect hands,
my father's hands,
and the taste of butter.