Blood Gravy
During the war Aunt May
was left standing at her kitchen sink
holding a piece of honey bread on her tongue,
peeling onions and staring out the window
while a pot of blood gravy simmered.
That first spring
she turned her mirror against the wall
and worked the farm like a man.
One day on her way toward the house
she saw Christ’s face in her kitchen window screen.
When she looked closer it was an old woman’s face.
The next day she invited three young men for supper.
After they soaked up the last gravy with bread
and wiped their mouths on their sleeves,
one said he saw his dead mother in the window,
one said he saw Christ,
one said he saw nothing but a window screen
that hadn’t been stretched tight on its frame
and he’d be around about four o’clock
the next afternoon to fix it.
