"remembered"

This was my mother's grandfather,
the nurse told me in a whisper,
and I believed it.

He was old enough to be anything,
his forehead a craggy cliff,
bristling with blackberry-vine eyebrows.

I leaned closer to listen
as his voice scraped slow across his throat,
his chin wagging with effort.

Finding the right words was like
finding a needle on the forest floor
muffled for decades in layers of leaves.