Cousin Dolly

Taught me to prize the little things the yellow rim of a rooster’s eye just before it crows the spell of iron that women petitioned from red clay dirt a whole rainbow in a drop of dew that slip of space between diaper and downy skin just enough to put her brown toe in to safely feel for a jackknifed pin

When I was six or seven Cousin Dolly learned me to read the sky She raised her right leg with all her might and with her big toe as a pointer showed me the big and baby dippers and the man who lived inside the moon If you stand real stillyou can make out his smileand just the edge one of his eyes Alongside Cousin Dolly I could see most anything

Though I saw the hunch in Dolly’s back I never saw what my cousins claimed to see just behind her sideways eye

Cousin Dolly taught me to favor what was unwanted and wild but warned against too much treasuring Once you get a toeholdletting go is the most necessary kindness

When I was hot and thirsty Dolly drew me brand new water from her well With her foot she’d turn the crank lower the bucket to the darkest deep then hoist and dip the sweetest water ever And she wore that red-rimmed dipper over her left shoulder from well to wall like a long determined braid

As the water cooled my quivering chin I’d ask Cousin Dolly all over again how she got that scooper from kitchen to well

She’d wink and grin like she always did You know I’ll never tell