Bart Wilcox
Grandmother
2025, Oil and pastel on canvas, 24″ x 24″

The woman came across the Rockies
dragging seven siblings in a covered wagon
and put them up in a dugout house
while the wind howled ceaselessly,
and all I can see when I remember
her is the tangle of portulaca that spilled
out of an old wringer washer parked
in the yard, while we choked down raisin pie and
butterknuckle with warm milk in the
suffocating corn crib of a house, the garden
spitting up baby’s breath
toothcup, pimpernel, henbit, ground-cherry
and clover, sunflower, aster, sedge,
bachelor’s button, goldenrod, sage and
dogsalt, rockcress, milkwort, bluets and
blackeyed susans, all wild, save the
flower in the washtub, all cultivated by
the wind and, like her kin, often scattered
and often coming home.