Elise Gregory and her scions inhabit a small hillside in western Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in Stoneboat, Rock & Sling, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Cider Press Review, Women Arts Quarterly, Mom Egg Review and elsewhere. All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood, which she co-edited and compiled with Emily Gwinn was published April 2016 by Sage Hill Press.
Songs of an Old Farmhouse
The song lived. The song was proud
and awful inside the farmhouse. It sang
with a toneless throat in the shower.
It sang through maple floors. The doors
caught it and complained when shut
or opened 'til kids cried. The song
was persistent inside goats
and fox-claimed chickens—dead beaks
clacked in time. It had a mouth
and hands that hooked us. The song tended
a garden filled with foxglove. It created a chorus
of orioles.
The song lounged on the front porch
in summer, tickling the children like a bad
uncle. I thought I'd dust it out—take a vacation
from all the sound. But the song wouldn't budge,
my sons humming along.