Making Butter by Diane Wahto

In the kitchen with the low windows

my fat grandmother grinds away

at the brown wooden churn. The wattles

of her arms move in rhythm with

the clack of the heavy paddles.

I watched her then, savored the sour

smell of butter, took for granted

that a woman would work this hard

for food. Her overloaded heart held out

for years. She cooked, cleaned, bleached,

laundered, starched, ironed, mended.

Bathed eight children one after the other

in a common zinc tub. Every Sunday

she dressed up twice for church. Black dress

with the tiny white flowers, black hat

balanced atop her grey hair, wound in a bun.

In the end it was her brain, tiny vessels bursting

silently, a slow conspiracy of displacement.

My mother, Pearl, the child of disappointment

became third person to my grandmother.

My grandmother became Susan once more.

     ~ Diane Wahto

Diane Wahto is a retired Butler Community College English instructor. She, her husband, and three dogs live in Wichita. Her three children and five grandchildren live in Lawrence and Shawnee. Her poem “Crossing Highway 66,” will appear in Reflect and Write, a text for high school students, in spring 2013.

54. To the Stars Through Difficulty: Diane Wahto

Straight up, light years from Wichita, the sun meets
Beta in Cassiopeia. Cross currents clear the air here,
bring Spring Star into view on the horizon. In Michigan,
a man once asked me about the Kansas wheat
and the cattle. I, a child of asphalt and brick,
saw more cows in Kalamazoo than ever appeared
in my Kansas home town. As for wheat, fallow fields
provide fertile ground for teenage make-out sessions.

Once I walked on lake shores. Now I walk on the verge
of the river that nourished the People of the South Wind.

– Diane Wahto

49. Snowstorm

Winner of the Kansas Poetry Month Contest, week two: snow and ice (amateur category)

Two of the boys dead before they graduated

high school. One shot by a pumpkin farmer saving

his Halloween crop on a cold October night.

The other killed when his horse threw him.

This boy, more animal than child, came to school

with dirty-faced brothers and sisters

on days when it was too cold in the unheated house

they called home.

The year before, when the snowstorm hit,

the kids slewed their eyes to the schoolhouse windows,

said I needed to let school out before we were snowed in.

I, too focused on the lessons, told them to pay attention

and forget about an early release.

Then the parent showed up at the door and pointed to my VW bug,

almost buried in white. She took the kids, I plowed through

the blizzard-hidden road ten miles to our little house in town.

We didn’t leave for days except for my husband’s treks

to the grocery store through the snow tunnel in the street,

where he filled a backpack with staples to see us through the siege.

– Diane Wahto

Diane Wahto’s poetry has been published in Midwest Quarterly, AID Review, and Coalition Connections: The Feminization of Poverty. Awards include the American Academy of Poets Award and the 2011 Salina Spring  Reading Series New Voice Award. She lives in Wichita, Kansas with her husband and two dogs.