Pipe Smoke or My Grandmother's Toenails (Philomath 1946)

I remember my grandmother's toe nails,
how she sat and pared
her feet with a pearl-handled knife.

The nails were yellow, as was the inlay of the knife,
as was her hair
where it wasn't quite brown,
dyed with tea.

She would sit on the edge of her bed with one leg drawn up,
her night clothes tucked neatly around her,
and sometimes drew blood
when she slipped
or dug deep at a corn.

She used kitchen shears for her trim
and the blades clacked shut
with the sound of our front gate latching
and trimmings flew like wood chips or flakes of enamel.
It was my job
to track down and pick up the leavings.

It was thus I grew and came to remember Philomath
which is where she cooked
on a stove that was fired with wood
and is where I split
fir slabs full of splinters and pitch;
where I wore thick gloves
and swung my right arm with authority.
The kindling pinged away from my axe like a spring,
not at all like wood.

My grandmother could cackle with laughter
but she told no jokes.
When she worked on her nails she would sing
and would smell of soap
and relate a story of childhood: how her father smoked
a pipe
and blew warm smoke in her ear
to relieve the ache.