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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Formative” Down in the Dirt, v170 (the Apr. 2020 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Foundations the Down in the Dirt Feb.-April 2020 issues collection book		get the 322 page Feb.-April 2020 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Dig

Marilee Pritchard

The first time I touched her
She was so old, she scared me.
Gray hair bound back with a gypsy bandanna,
Two more teeth than a toddler,
A face with so many craters
It rivaled the moon.

When the Germans took their last cow,
Killed and ate all the pigs,
Cut out her brother’s tongue
For hiding apples in the barn,
My grandmother had quite enough.
She bound the first boat she could for America
With everything she owned in the world—
A few nuggets of gold, a pierzyna,
Two babies, and a Madonna, the color of pitch.

In her cabbage rose parlor,
She kept two pictures on the wall—
The somber eyed Nicholas,
Martyred tsar of Russia, sat alongside
smiling Franklin Roosevelt.
Steeped in fear and tradition, Grandma
Was no great lover of the Russians,
But she knew enough to respect authority.
Franklin Roosevelt was everybody’s
Daddy Warbucks. Even in death,
He could charm a room.

Two men—twenty five years apart,
A continent dividing them.
One man’s blindness fueled a revolution,
The other man’s vision saved the world
While Poor men everywhere
continue to struggle
To reclaim lives and land
History stole and burned.

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