This is for My Grandmother
This is for my grandmother, Carolyn Colby.
“Terminal cancer,” the doctor said. His eyes filled with tears.
“I’ll get you the best hospice care in Boston.” He put his arm around her.
My grandmother’s eyes were cloudy but dry.
She said, “I’m 84, I’ve had a good life, so I don’t want to die.
I want experimental treatment.”
“That would ruin the months you’ve got left,” the doctor said.
My grandmother said, “I’ll risk it,” and she did
And had a fatal stroke
On her ninety-third birthday.
“This is for My Grandmother” first appeared in The Providence Journal.
Opening Lines
“There is no Frigate like a Book”
Will make you take another look.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”
Has surely done its author proud.
“Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind”
Secures a place within my mind.
The moral is: Do not despair;
A great first line is hardly rare.
“Opening Lines” first appeared as a letter in The New York Times Book Review in response to Elisa Gabbert, who said, “Truly great first lines are rare.”
Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has had over 280 poems published in a wide range of places, including twenty-two in past issues of Sparks of Calliope.
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