Annalee by Ben Rasnic

Anointed at birth
with a name
inspired by Poe’s
“Annabelle Lee”

my grandmother always maintained
a certain dignity, devoted
wife and caretaker
of farm and family
without complaint,

from gathering kindling
for the fireplace
to fence out the cold

to corralling the cattle
into the cherry red barn
where, once settled,
she would milk the cows

while singing “I’ll Fly Away”
in a lilting comforting aria
as unpasteurized spurts splashed
into the battered rusty metal bucket,

a prelude to down home meals
she always cooked from scratch,
passing along
her quirky colloquialisms

& southern slang
such as
“cute as a bug’s ear”
or “It doesn’t amount
to a hill of beans”

to anyone who listened
while muttering
a couple of syllables
beneath her breath
to no one
in particular…………

And now on the cusp
of 66 years,
I have acquired
some of those quirky
idiosyncrasies
I laughed at
as a child

& quite honestly become annoyed

upon discovering it merged
with my routine behavior.

Yet now I embrace
each memory of her
which keeps her alive
some 28 years later

& whenever I fix a problem
or consider a completed
task well done

find myself
muttering
“Mm, hmm.”



Ben Rasnic currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben's poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.