is a pie you’ll never have
like my grandmother’s pies
lemon meringue and apple for Christmas
and in the summer blueberry
the least sweet my favorite
up at the lake I’d spend hours in the hot afternoon sun
filling cup after cup of small plump
dark blue almost purple berries
that my grandmother baked into a pie
she’d come with it to dinner
from her antique shop in the village
a crooked room filled with art glass and porcelain
I had to walk so carefully among those old things
gleaming and easily broken
all gone now
the Majolica Tiffany and Wedgwood
packed up in the back of my uncle’s pickup truck
he drove it to Andalusia, Alabama
a place I expect never to see
its name like a name for heaven
