 So my grandmother is probably the weirdest, most amazing person that I know. She marched with Dr. King and she went to Paris to, with the treatment of Paris after Vietnam ended to help free prisoners of war. She is a now-Jewish, ex-Catholic, ex-priest, ex-monk, hermit. So she's eccentric but I love her and this is a letter that I wrote to my grandmother. Grandmother, I saw a little chickadee dancing in yellow leaves the other day. It felt as though it prayed, giving homage to goddess of cats who sits in the window watching or to god of autumn frost drops that melt and ruffle feathers or to no god at all. Do you remember the house on Idaho Hill Road? It seemed we could sit in your green-tiled kitchen for hours watching birds. You used to put pants and boots under your mom's habit to chase squirrels away. I'd love to follow you out, sit on glacial boulders and listen to snow tickling fir trees or wood smoke fill the clearing that is down the street here and artist is painting a mural on her flatboard that's a prairie sunrise in a mountain town. Prairie girl to mountain woman. Whenever I felt lonely in that full prairie emptiness, I'd wake early to watch the morning grow. Some hand plucked Indian paintbrush to sweep it across the sky. Think of your hand like you used to pick bundles for the table. Yesterday morning, a cringey fog echoed my footsteps on the way to school. Trees strode past me going the opposite direction. One by one whisper by whisper. Have you ever tried to play your music in a bomb? I wonder which instrument feel perfect or maybe just voice. Whenever I hear such silence, I think of you playing your black upright. Your fingers prayed above the keys like a vermata resting over a moment in time.