Nan, sacred magnitude,
grandmother,
features Indian and white.
Tall as grass above the bison,
full of jade,
grass on an endless world
of wind and prayer.
My grandmother,
forebear of my soul,
a woman stronger than the sky.
Impervious to immensity,
her world coming through extinctions,
timeless outback regions
of a North American sea.
Grandmother making German kuchen,
cinnamon and dough,
with a face of immutable providence.
Where do great souls go?
Where does my grandmother
with her enormous heart,
lay her head,
after putting the son of her son
into his crib,
folding the sound of her voice
in the clothes,
leaving him in a room
warm with her center,
a prince among princes,
with a queen’s blood
in his veins?