In the Kitchen We String Beans

They mound like a grave on today's front page,
covering the news that a soldier was hung,
strung up like a ham, in some faraway country.
My mother, my grandmother, my aunt, me.
We snip heads from beans,
unthread their sides then snap the green flesh
into finger joints we'll cook for supper.

I listen as they talk of cancer,
how suddenly it comes, how quickly it works,
how Herbert Combs planted his corn
on the slant of his hill two weeks
before he died, how old Ethel,
thin as a vine this Sunday at church,
won't last long.

The soldier's smiling face peeks at me
through beans in my pile.  His newsprint eyes
dampen with dew that came in from the garden.
His skin softens.  He is a boy,
my son's age, arms and legs
like tender pods, plucking beans
from stems before the season
takes them to seed.

We are a family of women
who grow older than oaks.
Every summer, we string beans,
slicing out the imperfections
with a blade.  Grandmother strings
slowest of us all for beans slip
between her thick fingers too often
for speed.

I am waiting to die, she told me
two nights ago.  Now she says
how good these beans will taste
with a spoonful of grease and a
bite of cornbread.

from Snake Dreams (Nightshade Press, 1994) ©2007