Grace: For Grace Paley, of blessed memory
- GraceFor Grace Paley, of blessed memory
Grace is dying. Today she drew a not very good picture of the house, the garden, her husband planting
kisses on her neck, her arms, every place else ravaged by wars and politics she fought against in more sturdy years. Today she writes
PREPARE! PREPARE! across the picture she has drawn and tacks it all up on the door of the old ramshackle house, where
together, wife and husband have labored, written, whitened over thirty years of Vermont snows, thirty years of Vermont greening [End Page 87]
in the stubborn, trying— hard garden, where he kneels and kneads tender earth, where she is looking from inside
love’s deep well spilling out. [End Page 88]
Doris Ferleger, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice and poet whose work has been published in numerous literary journals including South Carolina Review, 13th Moon, South Dakota Review, Comstock Review, Many Mountains Moving, as well as in anthologies. Ferleger has an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is seeking publication of her recently completed book of poetry entitled Big Silences in a Year of Rain. She resides with her husband in the Philadelphia area.
