Classic Poem

It's the first night, I suppose,
in more than eighty year
Hattie has slept alone. . .
And outdoors, in the falling
snow, without bedclothes
or night light and none near
but the deaf sunken stone
were one to awake calling.

What could old Hattie have done
wrong, anyway? — Made raw-
milk cheese, rubbed eggs, admired
her rose-red Christmas cactus, and
rocked, looking out at one
more mid-February thaw,
drifts melting and dungwagon mired —
that now like a reprimand

she might have heard sixty-eight
or seventy years ago,
(such as " Hattie thinks she is clever,
but will go to bed with boxed ears
and no supper " ) she is told: " Tonight
you'll sleep with shoes on in the snow
in the cemetery and never
never wake up in a million years. "











Used by permission of the author.