Great Aunt

Betty Davis
I remember you, Lucy Lee,
perched on the bank of my experience,
satin water slipping by like my childhood,
surface shimmering with clouds, trees, light
and you, great aunt, smoking a clay pipe,
sitting on a stump, your carefree fingers
barely holding your cane fishing pole;
saying you never spit on the ground,
your proud, innocent smile				
crinkling old-leather skin.
The earth was your home;
snuff, your vice, spit in a coffee can.
Your virtue not imagined
in the standards of your time.

The fish and I cared not about these things.
We were free in your net
where you never used false bait
nor judged a child.