This Woman

Today, Monday, June 6th, would have been my Nanny's 81st birthday.

Peggy Muriel Johnson Brookreson-Brolls

June 6, 1930 - September 30, 2009

This woman is like a sleek, red-on-red '69 Corvair

languishing under arthritic mesquites over in Lawn,

scrapyard, Texas … and she sleeps peacefully,

rusting, beneath a roasting sun's dread … praying

her purr is not too long dead. And this woman

is like a platter of rib-eye steak with puddled juice

seeping into creamed potatoes … indeed, the

sourdough sops her up. Bath for the palate?

A slippery, wide-mouthed quart of iced tea with

lemon. Un-sweet, please. This woman is even like

Pee-Wee's ... the old rock gas station right before

the big oak-lined curve in the Gap ... that remembers

fifteen cent Dr. Peppers from the ice box, days of real

full service, and the billowing smokehouse out back

with its tree's swing still swaying as when baby Harry

hung himself from it. Yes, this woman is ever

so much like silver-streaked, seventy-nine years of

pure West Texas ... forty of which passed strolling

the God-forsaken wilderness in gallant blunder;

and she always took life for granted so long as her

four children were fed.

Shot in the head ... right there in the blue-n-white

striped VFW building that's next door to what's now

the all-nude Cloud Nine ... and somehow lived to

not want to tell a soul about it. This woman.

                                                                                        © brooke