Blue Flaxen Field

I close my eyes and see a blue flaxen field
I see a young woman in the middle of it.
She looks at me and she has my daughter’s eyes,
So blue, like the flax flower she planted in the spring.

I see that woman again in the summer heat.
Exhausted, harvesting her field.
She runs her hands over her face the way I usually do
When I am tired or stay too long in the sun.

I hear a melancholy song and the sound of a spinning wheel
From a lopsided house near a snow-covered truck.
Is it my mother’s voice I am hearing
Or that woman from my dream spinning her yarn?

I look through the window and see that she is weaving,
Her candlelit hands are moving so fast.
I know it is my grandma’s hands I am looking at,
Strong and smart, they could do everything.

Now she is embroidering, sitting on the porch,
Strange birds and flowers coming from beneath her hands.
She is smiling and daydreaming, of what I don’t know.
About her future children? Me or my daughter?

More than likely she is thinking about next harvest season
Or the new guy from the neighboring village
Who glanced at her in church last Sunday.
May be she wonders about the parents she can’t remember.

I wish she could tell me her story and all she knows
But I don’t know that woman, though may be a little -
Her eyes, her voice, her hands and
The way she felt when she was tired or lonely.

Most importantly for me and my children
I think about her often, especially,
While holding a beautiful linen towel
Made by my great grandmother over a century ago.