The complete poemearlier and revised versions, in full
“Fragility,” revised as “She Knelt”
You know the meeting
when a question asked
hurts someone’s feelings.
The goal of the discussion
disregarded
like a raised hand
ignored.
My grandmother lived
in a dirt-floor house,
walked a mile to a well,
slept in a bed with two siblings
and a few fire-warmed bricks.
Never once said,
“My feelings are hurt,”
wouldn’t understand
the word
fragility.
Her schooling stopped
in sixth grade.
Most mornings, she knelt,
said her rosary,
then stepped across
a broken-planked porch,
hugged a wooden pail,
and trekked to the water.
Coming home,
she gingerly avoided stones
that stabbed her feet,
stones that bruised—
still, she whispered
blessings
into the early light.
“My sister Ag was always
smarter than me,” she said.
“You’re smart like her.
I know you’re gonna get
a lot of degrees.”
She looked at leaves
falling outside the window.
Lost in thought,
she traced the cross
on my forehead.
“If I didn’t have my
prayers, I don’t know
where I’d be. They’re
mostly all I read.”
As a young girl,
my grandmother knelt each morning,
said her rosary,
then stepped across a broken-planked porch
and walked a mile to a well,
clutching a wooden pail.
Coming home, she stepped around stones
that stabbed and blackened her feet.
Once I said, “That must have been hard.”
She paused—
“Sometimes it was,
but I was so glad to have my mother and siblings.
After my father died,
my mother Josephine cleaned for the rich.
Storefront windows read ‘No Irish Need Apply.’”
Nana crouched,
looked into my eyes.
“Jimmy, your sadness
for the people you loved never ends.
The pain is a bit less each year.
But you always feel the ache.”
Still, she prays by a great oak
along a path walked many years ago.
She whispers blessings
beneath a canopy of light and wind.
Onward she moves,
delighted by birds trilling,
the small music of all her mornings.
Earlier text from the earlier reading copy of Crossings on this site. Revised text from Crossings.
You know the meeting
when a question asked
hurts someone’s feelings.
[…]
Never once said,
“My feelings are hurt,”
wouldn’t understand
the word
fragility.
“My sister Ag was always
smarter than me,” she said.
“You’re smart like her.
I know you’re gonna get
a lot of degrees.”
She looked at leaves
falling outside the window.
Most mornings, she knelt,
said her rosary,
then stepped across
a broken-planked porch,
hugged a wooden pail,
and trekked to the water.
As a young girl,
my grandmother knelt each morning,
said her rosary,
then stepped across a broken-planked porch
and walked a mile to a well,
clutching a wooden pail.
The first poem sets the grandmother’s hardships against a present-day meeting room, and she enters as evidence in an argument about the word “fragility.” The revised poem removes the meeting and the argument and keeps the grandmother. She now speaks in her own voice, about a smarter sister, her prayers, and her mother, Josephine, who cleaned for the rich past windows that read “No Irish Need Apply.”
The morning walk to the well survives nearly word for word. What changes is everything around it. The new title is taken from the old poem’s own best verb, so the grandmother is named by what she did. Her words to the boy about grief, “The pain is a bit less each year. / But you always feel the ache,” take the place of the earlier poem’s argument.
A suggestion. If a draft seems to be making a case, you might try a version that begins with the person at its center speaking, and leaves the case unstated.