Jane C. Miller
I will burn with it
I inherit a black mourning cap worn
by my grandmother at 16 when her
mother died. I am the only one it fits,
such an ugly gift, its yarn rough
as netted horsehair tied with a black
ribbon, made by an unknown woman
and passed down through generations
to bury husbands, parents, children.
Such intimate oppression
my grandmother hid in a drawer.
To throw it away, bad luck.
When I put it on, I become
grief’s severe matron,
in my eyes the emptiness
of frozen fields in Iowa.
When crows call
silence to account, I will be
the last to wear it.
Jane C. Miller is the author of Canticle for Remnant Days (2024) and coauthor of Walking the Sunken Boards (2019). A winner of the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest and two state fellowships, her work has appeared in RHINO, Colorado Review, Apple Valley Review and on buses through the Poetry in Transit program. Miller coedits the online poetry journal, Quartet. www.janecmiller.com.