March 17, 2025: Beverly Matherne, "Aunt Alice"

 

Aunt Alice

by: Beverly Matherne

Aunt Alice chooses
a strand of pink floss
separates it slowly.
She snips a piece
puts its tip
into her mouth
pursing her lips
drawing it out
priming it
for easy passage
into the needle’s eye.

Aunt Alice shows me
how to hold
the embroidery hoop
in my left hand 
drive the needle up
from the back
with my right
pull it through
the fabric
lifting the thread
all the way up
then driving
the needle down
reaching for it
from the back
and pushing it up again
over and over
running stitch
back stitch
chain stitch
my little fingers tired
my little fingers pricked
and pricked again.

Aunt Alice shows me
how to tongue
my little wounds
ease the sting
stop the blood
its smack
of salt and iron
lets me take a break
after each mishap
boosts my courage.

When Aunt Alice
thinks I’m ready
she chooses
two strands of floss
cornflower blue for blossoms
forest green for leaves.
The petal
of a small flower
guides my daisy stich.
Then comes fishbone
for leaves. I strive
to get them right
stay on this sort of
straight and narrow.

In a nursing home at 95
Aunt Alice doesn’t know
who she is
or where she is
most days
but when I enter her room
a week before morphine
she rasps, “Hey Beverly.”

The pillow case
wrapped in tissue
in a small box
rests on the top shelf
of my linen closet
its imperfect stiches
forever wayward.
Aunt Alice, forever
tranquil, forever mild
in that box forever.
Me, finger in mouth,
forever grateful,
healing my wounds.

U.P. Poet Laureate Beverly Matherne, Professor Emerita of English at Northern Michigan University, served as director of the MFA program in creative writing and poetry editor of Passages North literary magazine. She grew up in a large Francophone family in and around New Orleans. Her new poem “Aunt Alice” comes from that time and place. Also forging her identity as a Yooper, she is inspired more and more by the natural world here, through the influence of the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy and her own peregrinations across the U.P.’s fifteen counties, offering poetry readings and workshops to middle- and high-school students, her poet laureate mission. Her eighth book of poetry, a collection of U.P. haiku, goes to press in July of 2025.  She is a Yooper.