The neighbor woman

she, so much older than the hills,

brought us lard-thickened cookies.

like eating stale cardboard,

they didn't go down with milk.

'twas all the same, these pucks of grain

she brought to us when one moved on

when sons were married and someone died

the cakes, the scones, the buns came over.

she cultivated a kindness, that she did

from deep in a generation long forgotten

the kind you knew would keep the kettle on

the kind that fed both kin and stranger.

but when my father passed to Tir Na N'Og

she brought us a ham that passed for barely edible

and I, my father's son, wrote a thank you letter

for delivering us from another table full of clutter.

and one day her own man suddenly slipped away,

and we had to return the kindness, the favors,

so, I concocted a lovely creation in my own loving way

to settle her ever-nervous female constitution.

and after many days she grew silent on her porch swing

though many nights she kept the house in light

that thinning frail waif of a decaying woman

with her nightmare blessings of culinary fright.