“Mary! Who is that boy?”
“It’s your grandson, Clyde, Grace’s eldest.”
“Did he come to see the tallest tree in Pakistan?”

My grandmother waves me into the sitting room,
where the Scrabble board is set upon a sewing table
the wax plants make do with
windowlight through a membrane of dust.

She wins the draw for first play,
picks one by one the tiles off the rack,
emptying it upon the board.

“Hairpin.”

Her 82 points are begrudgingly scrawled-
a good hostess never wins.

Stranded with vowels
I counter with “pi.”

I see her rely on tally marks for my score.

Family pictures on a lace runner atop the piano,
and books. eagle-clawed feet of the playing stool.

As a pupil, they were a refuge for shame-heavy eyes,
after my fingers failed to navigate
a scattergraph of troublesome notes
above the treble C.

“Do you want to see the tallest tree in Pakistan?”
My grandfather, irritable, sends this request from another room.
She leaves and I hear her gently scold.
It won’t be the last time today.

The specter of lunch hangs in the air,
pan-fried cumin chicken,
Served with skim milk, an awkward blue in her favorite glasses,
with etchings of northern birds.

A painting of a Kansas farmhouse hangs in the hallway
with portentous crows rushing from the dust devils,
next to a colorless photograph of her, unmistakably a mother.
Resolute in a plaid dress and head scarf,
clutching the armpits of a naked baby above
the soapy well of the kitchen sink.

Grandfather laughs at the sight of me
and retrieves his cane from atop the
stacks of newspapers and magazines
congealed upon the coffee table.
His reading habits seem to sprout legs at the corners.

The backyard is thick with birdseed,
and an earthenware dish full of water
sits at the base of an old pine,
the center pip of his planting pattern,
inspired by a five point domino.

Like a “C” struggling to close,
his eyelid stretches across the empty socket.
He no longer wears his false eye.
My grandmother’s reminders of convention
are met with grumbling words of “why”
All together we trust the intangible order,
society is polite flesh upon animal frame.

His gaze ascends the trunk of his tallest tree…

I don’t see what he sees, this man,
who is either sick or enlightened.
I don’t know if his tree ends in breezy sky,
or if it’s peak skewers the clouds,
miles above the lead feet of my youthful vision.