For My 'Oma' Poem by John Tansey

If the foreknowledge of our own impending death
is not enough to put proper perspective
upon things,
then to clear the stern leer of our hatred,
to forgive the unforgivable
to cut through the flippant diversions
of possesions
and find at the bottom of the bag,
playing in its emptiness,
the child, within, that matters most.

My grandmother, old and blind
was,
like zen, in her old age...

still able to keep the world in order
carefully absorbed with every action
it almost seemed to evolve around her
she would arrange the yarns by notion
and fold the grocery bags
pat them and place them
into size-ordered spice tins
and the denominations of money
was a mathematical formula which

was more complex than quantum physics, even...