National Poetry Month, Day 8: Sharon Olds

by | Apr 8, 2014 | Great Reads

Today I reblog an old entry, year-ago old, when I congratulated poet Sharon Olds on winning the Pulitzer prize and posted this poem. I remember my mom really liked this poem, and I did too, so here it is again. Enjoy.

Grandmother Love Poem

Late in her life, when we fell in love,

I?d take her out from the nursing home

for a chaser and two bourbons. She?d crack

a joke sharp as a tin lid

hot from the teeth of the can-opener,

and cackle her crack-corn laugh. Next to her

wit, she prided herself on her hair,

snowy and abundant. She would lift it up

at the nape of the neck, there in the bar,

and under the white, under the salt-and-

pepper, she?d show me her true color,

the color it was when she was a bride:

like her sex in the smoky light she would show me

the pure black.

? Sharon Olds, from The Dead and The Living