The TRP Chapbook Series

Our Blue Earth explores the melancholy dark side as well as the natural beauties of rural life as seen through the eyes of the author as a young man growing up in Blue Earth, Minnesota.

GRANDMA RAIN
When it rains hard,
I think of the small ring
I keep in a hollow book—
 
my grandmother
and her small hands.
She touches my cheek,
 
smiles.  I tell her my name again
and for a little while sit with her,
sharing the warmth of her shawl.
 
Then as the rain slows,
I find myself alone again, and young,
and I promise to be good.