AN OLD WOMAN THROWING KNIVES

My mother's stepmother's mother

Ruled the kitchen. When arthritis
Forbade her using can openers
She’d hurl meat cleavers across the room
At cans of condensed milk set on a table.
Her loaves of bread were painted

With egg yolk. She used a long feather

So old her own mother might have known

The aboriginal goose from which it came.
 ("She'd heard of germs," my mother said,
"But did not believe in them.")
When my small mother needed love here
Was where she found it.