For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

My Grandpa Robinson, the one referred to in the poem yesterday, died on the day after my 10^th birthday. In this poem, I look back on that day.

June 10, 1979

Elmer and I are fishing the swimming hole
when my father calls from the bridge above,
"It's your grandpa," as if he was on the phone.
I arrive at the house, am escorted to the porch
by my uncles, who ask to see the birthday gift
I received the previous day, my first jackknife.
Opening it, I cut across the whorls of my thumb.
Inside, washing the wound, red lines the yellow
porcelain sink. Like blood from the first trout
we cleaned, skinned together in this same sink.
My thumb turns pale, the complexion he wears
lying in the room next to the kitchen. I sit now
in the recliner there, use that thumb on his diary,
discover only weather reports in his entries:
"warm, sunny, 70s today, wind at 8 mph
from the NNW, 29.08 on the barometer."

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Leaving the Psychologist: An Abecedarian Ekphrastic” by Griselda Y. Acosta.