Fredric Hildebrand
Helen
“Don’t you miss out on bein’ alive,”
my southern grandmother said,
her gnarled fingers holding old moments:
the lost family farm, early widowhood,
dead children, and her one-room life
at a hundred years in her eyes like
the light of an uncertain candle.
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician who lives and writes in Neenah, WI.