Becoming

As someone who likes to write about  personal change, it would be hard for me to pass up a Daily Prompt about metamorphosis: “Tomorrow is the first day of a brand new year. Tomorrow you get to become anyone in the world that you wish. Who are you?”

OK Daily Prompt, this one is easy, and not just because I wrote this poem many years ago, but because all these years later I still know that the one thing I most want to be when I grow up is to be just like her…

Almost smiling! She hated being photographed.

Psalm

grand/mother
in my childish eyes
I see you stately and serene
in tailored navy dresses punctuated
with a hint of coloured silk
your sparse unruly crown of grey
all disciplined with net and pins

I am six and I have
asked you the same riddle
every day this week     “what
do you call a dog without
a tail”    and though i
know you’re very smart
you never get the answer
“hot dog” and you always
laugh and i feel clever

we play cards    you teach me
how to lose by playing to
win    you teach me how to win
by letting me

at your funeral we toast you saying
not a woman here who doesn’t wish
that some of you lived on in her

i inherit
your engagement ring    the one
i learn    you flung across a golf course
in a fit  of rage at your fiancé
my grandfather

with this ring
this story
changes everything

grannie I’m still throwing things in anger
and my hair is creeping grey
your ring fits loosely on my hand
i haven’t had it altered
I’ve been praying
i’ll grow into it someday