Mary Beth Becker

Mary Beth Becker was raised in the woods north of Omaha, Nebraska, but lives with her wife in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Mud Season Review, Split Rock Review, Hobart, West Trade Review, Spillway, and Wayfarer. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, a former Writer’s Coop resident at Sundress Academy for the Arts, and a friend to all rivers. among other journals. They can be found on Twitter @MihirWords. 

DISPATCH

Written in the voice of my grandmother

Of course, there are yeses and nos in this life. Did I 

think at my age I’d be calling you from the back porch, 

dead tired, so sticky with grass clippings I’m afraid 

to walk inside and dirty my good floor? Course not. But 

had I not gone out today, I would have missed the choir 

of turkey fledglings clustered in the brome, little beaks 

behind the grass like a kid peeks through curtains before 

a play. I always wanted to be a mother. They all grew up,

I’m still here mothering this land, stacking hay for

the stubborn horse and keeping the coyotes out. 

There’s less of them now. God takes and gives. 

We forgot to mount the bluebird house to the fence 

and you can guess what happened— hailstorm, tumble 

of feathers, the walls inside spackled with tiny drips of yolk. 

The night before that I was dreading the dead maple 

we had to bring down, it’s so much to get to the trunk, 

all these branches, branches’ branches to cut through 

and heave on a stack with the others. Please, Lord, I asked,

make it easier this time, a little less strain. Come morning? 

The same wind that brought death to the bluebirds 

brought the maple down smack on top of the brush 

pile, no need for the chainsaw, no need to move so much 

as a stick. I don’t look for the logic in it, just grateful, all this 

beauty and grief. I watch clouds collect over the pasture. 

I wonder which will rain down next.

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