What We Knew of Power

What We Knew of Power

Turrell, Arkansas

Grandmamma called planes—

her palms spoke like engines; fingers, wings. White dust parted air and followed hands like a voice

lingering still, always gripping for a field sign: the edge of a broken fingernail, cracked knuckle mound.

Woman played the signs of Mason men she knew she shouldn’t have known, remembering, Big Daddy

taught me, and Not a sign for little girls. Yes, Woman turned plain men and their topdressing into her own—plucking precise

the signs of something infinite, exact as handfuls of chicken down.

This was her potency, her feat of will: the ability to direct movement away from the white husk of heaven

and weigh it to a dive clap to ground.

But what did we know skirted and scampered around the summer yard in winter

stocking, puffing cigarette candies—rings of sugar smoke, that saccharine satisfaction?

What did we learn for that matter, those Julys away from home, clambering uphill, tumbling mannish after each other?

It used to be that this was no more than carved time for summer family, that there was nothing

to be learned hiding behind magnolias and blossoming to base. It used to be that hide-n-seek was all

we knew, lips to cheeks our only retribution.