Linda Parsons: Checkers with my Granddaughter

She’s not out for blood but, like her father,
         a natural strategist and soon has me 

in her grasp. This lithe player at eleven
         paints me into a corner—her proud  

red battlements, mine hapless black. 
         Sometimes you have to sacrifice, she says. 

It’s not that I lack attention or forethought.
         I see in her the girl I was at the same age, 

inching square by square, away from 
         the only life I knew, a checkerboard 

of attack and evade: my mother’s war 
         of attrition, my stepmother’s detente. 

I waver on the board. It’s time to sacrifice, 
         my granddaughter repeats. She double- 

then triple-jumps me, just as I leapt 
         one mother to another, into my father’s 

good graces—the playing field strewn 
         with uncountable dying and wounded. 

I yield to a girl still a stranger to grief 
         and loss. I crown her victory yawp. 

Copyright 2021 Linda Parsons

Linda Parsons is the poetry editor of Madville Publishing. Her many

collections of poetry include Candescent (Iris Press, 2019).

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