Clothespin Angels

my grandmother
is a strong woman, an old tree,
her breasts
are knotted wood, they groan
into the grain of her stomach, her thick
trunkbrown legs

my grandmother speaks of angels, says
they drop kisses like clothespins
onto my eyelids as i sleep,
that’s why they stick together
in the morning

my grandmother,
her eyes are water are golden,
a wooded stream lifting the earth
to a different bank

she is beautiful, my grandmother, and
as her leaves wither and drop,
those kissing angels,
they weep


                    Published 1998 in the anthology 90 Poets of the Nineties

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