Poems by Granny Nanny Darling (My recently departed grandmother)

My magical "Granny Nanny Darling" drew her last breaths in September after more than 9 decades on this earth.

She was the Mary Poppins of grandmothers…if your Mary Poppins was a Korean War Marine who used to smoke Pall Malls, a Peace Corps volunteer who lived in both Korea and the jungles of Ecuador, a NOAA map librarian who lived in Alaska and Utah, on Native American reservations but most of all a grandmother who replied to EVERY letter I ever sent her, who made milkshakes in a bag, who sent us moose poop jewelry, who wrote beautiful poems, who curated cookbooks, who loved a Latin mass as much as she did the Times Crossword puzzle and the post office, who loved birds and haikus, and who poured a bracing Manhattan.

I’m so thankful that my five oldest got to meet her and spend time with her and experience a small part of the matriarch who inspired me as a writer and reader and who so well loved a generation of grandchildren…and great-grandchildren. It was a blessing to get to know Granny Nanny as an adult--it often felt like getting to meet one's childhood hero to spend time with her--it felt giddy and wonderful and magic and somehow nostalgic all at the same time. I'm heartbroken and miss her so much...

When writing especially, she had a biting wit and sharp sense of humor that could cut to the bone.  Take this poem she wrote while still marieed to her future ex-husband.

TO JACK

Pompously you leave.

Your regal shadow follows.

Regicide.  I stomp.

MEANDERINGS

I would like to be a crocus.

I’d thrust my leaf arms up.

Breaking through the snows of March.

Demure ballerina of springtime in a tutu

                Of finely etched petals.

Small, elegant, much too close to the earth

                To be sniffed

I would not care to be a chrysanthemum…

Flamboyant cheerleader of flowerdom

Show-off petals and sweatsock smell.

Reminds me of a manure pile.

Noone shakes crocuses at football games.

Noone pins them to itchy wool plaid coats.

Crocuses live peacefully.

Kicking away the mulch of autumn I discover

                Their blossom and smile.