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Excerpt

MUD

At four years old, I walked with Grandpa to his allotment every day, to help by watching him. Sun and Grandpa had risen,
another day begun. He plunged his hands into curdling mud to plant that sapling of an apple-tree. Up to both elbows in the future, his fingers gently spread out roots and blossoming skies for years to come.
Yet he also touched three decades of the past, with rheumatic prickles in a thumb once nearly lopped clean off.
For other gardeners, it seemed just mud on their hands: they rinsed off at the standpipe.
But he, with insight that forgetfulness can have,
even early Alzheimer’s, let it dry and harden,
so his hands sealed the past to the future in a second skin, for the whole day.

After his heart-attack while gardening,
I presume the funeral home washed hands and elbows for him. But not before the dried mud had done its work,
even thickening on his fingers like rugged bark. Now, sixty years since his death, I revisit the tree that grows there.
My history is formed in handfuls of mud.