Geodes

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Geodes

Outside she made me watch her kill chickens.
Inside was breakfast - biscuits, Post Toasties
and cold fried chicken. Outside Grandpa beat
the roosters away from me with his cane.
Inside I stood naked on the table
under bright light while Grandma picked off ticks.

Each summer we drove there from Virginia
to visit Ozark cousins, watch baptisms
and cottonmouths at the river, find the
can of bacon grease by the slop bucket,
broom and rifle behind the bedroom door.
When Grandma and Grandpa moved into town

Grandpa still wore his overalls. His brown
squeeze top coin purse and green Double Mint gum
in a pocket. Funny and mean, smelling
like an oily shed and dirt, he drove me
out to the old farm in his blue pickup.
No one was there. They were at church in town.

By the outhouse he pushed up behind me
then reached around. It was wrong so I ran
and climbed into the back of the pickup.
He said something about loving him but
I wouldn’t sit up front. Never again.
We drove off the farm road to the highway
into Mountain View where Grandma and Mom
were back from church and getting dinner cooked.

In the dirt out at the farm my brother,
cousins and I would hunt for tan lumpy
baseball size rocks and break them wide open.
A sledgehammer worked best but we made do
with whatever got us inside ones lined
with white crystals and sometimes purple gems.
They were real. But in Virginia they said
how could dirty hollow rocks hide jewels?