Pie

You have my light-white hair, I notice.
Not yet reached the tricky age of seven,
so perhaps like me you will be blonde past eight
and blonde again at eighty.

“Nan, your skin is paper,”
and I laugh and show you how the flesh of my fingertips kneads
and holds impressions of a fork,
like crust.
My skin is now more pastry than bread dough,
the edible elastic.

You smell of grass and lemons,
and you will not remember apple picking
as more than novelty.

“Nan, could you always cook good?”
“Nan cooks so well because she’s old enough to know the tricks,”
your father says. I wonder if you notice
how he winces when he walks.
You are perhaps oblivious to pain.

We sprinkle sugar in the bottom of our dough-lined pan,
mound our apples with pats of butter
and slice the top crust like a star.
Now you know the tricks.
Hardly a matter of eighty years:
a sprinkling of sugar, nutmeg and some butter pats.

You have nutmeg now in swirls along your cheeks.
You alone do not speak loudly when you talk to me,
and so I hear you perfectly.
You are every freckle clear.

Everything is simple now
for we are very young.