1959, PARADISE

My great-grandmother's oldest daughter, my Great Aunt

Lillian, a travelling representative for the Yeoman Life

Insurance Company, always went first class,

Dressed to the teeth in the latest Paris fashions

Stitched at home on a wood-framed, foot-pedaled Singer

And sent postcards home sealed in blue-lined envelopes

Addressed in sweeping curlicued calligraphy. She had

Style and proved it when, at Christmas, she

Gave us kids, each, a polished silver dollar

Won at the tables in Vegas. She seemed younger

Than my mother, tall and straight Lilyflower,

Married again at sixty and retired to Paradise,

California, manager of a first class nut farm.

It was to her I wanted to take my bride

From Palo Alto, to the oldest living woman

Of my tribe; but two days, ten hours, before the trip

I and my car broke down. I in a nut house

And Lillian died eighty miles and years away in Paradise.