I dig out my Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer…
And the dedication in my mother’s handwriting
from my parents to me. I was ten. Just.
At Tin Table before her reading, Mary and I talked
about our shared childhood favorite author,
Laura Ingalls Wilder, of the Little House books.
Mary had visited her late life house
in Nebraska?
in the Ozarks we both nodded,
having seen a sign driving past
traveling with a group of writers
who didn’t understand when Mary cried,
“Stop the car! Stop the car!”
I was awed and excited and said so.
Told Mary about reading Laura’s books
to my young daughters, who had no taste
for Pa and his fiddle, the rope in the snowstorm,
and how I’d forgotten, but the girls reminded me
I had tortured them further by recording myself
reading the books so they could listen
when I wasn’t there.
Mary clasped my hand the whole time
as I clasped hers.