Wild MoonTransit JAN 00                        VOLUME 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS

UNTIL IT THUNDERS

Note: The vocative, ‘aw’, promotes sympathy as well as carrying distance.

When ever it thundered and lighting struck, my
grandma would run to bed with her smelling salts.
Aw Gurtie, Gertie, poor Gertie, my granddad said.

Granddad accented words in strange order,
sometimes thundering along as he told his
ancient stories about bargemen and wild animals.

He had a motorcycle accident in 1906
back when knee replacement was a steel pin.
He lost his knee cap, but he said it straightened him out.

He became a payroll clerk, grew tomatoes
and bought his first car in the nineteen teens,
stiff legged or not, he could still ride a clutch.

He also had a collection of antique pistols
and back before high security and metal detectors
he took it to work where he and a friend
fired one around the corner of an ell-shaped basement
a civil war pistol; he said it was real loud.

Down the river, on visits to the local tavern
grandma talked to beer-drinking fishermen.

Granddad didn't see the need to say anything
to barnacle-chested boatmen even though
he used to pole canal barges down Kanawa Canal
between Richmond and Petersburg.

All part of his Mercurial wisdom,
he loved to warn me about snapping turtles,
though I doubt there were very many around
when I was five, but he warned me anyway.

"They won't let go until it thunders," he said.
So, he grabbed my finger and I'd cry.

Then, grandma, would do the snapping,
"Bryant, aw, Bryant, don't torment that child."

Grandma loved beer and roses, fishing and baseball.
She sold the piano just to get a bigger TV
and watch baseball in the afternoon.
She bought everything at Miller & Rhodes Dept. store
in Richmond. Granddad drove her there once a week.
She was one of the great old Dames
who liked to frequent the Miller & Rhodes' Tea Room,
just to hear the organist.

Grandma never saw a doctor after her own doctor died.
She died on Christmas Day of ailments no one knew she had.

Granddad got real sick and we thought he was next.
The silence kept building up. It was so hard to let go.
He bought two more Buicks before he turned 95,
his 70 year driving record was clean.

One spring morning they arrested him
in his own driveway after a high speed chase.
He ran 3 lights trying to ‘stay ahead of an ambulance’
he told the judge, but that was no ambulance,
the judge laughed, that was a police car.

They wouldn't let him go.
The judge had to laugh, and exclaimed,
"I won't live to see your age."

The patrolman and the bailiff laughed.
Granddad's lawyer couldn't stop laughing.
The courtroom laughed, hung-over drunks
and young men with revoked licenses laughed
right along with me and my whole family.

Granddad had to swear he would never
apply for another license to drive.

He let it all go one June-bright day,
said he wanted to die, "It's about time,"
he said, propped up in his hospital bed
surrounded by family and beautiful nurses.

He let go peacefully, bewildered by such wonder
as the silence that builds up and won't let go,
like a snapping turtle, holding on until it thunders.

 

©Jimmy Warner Design, 2001