I saw my grandfather today though he died in the winter of 2004.

I took the steps down to the basement searching for a tool. I had forgotten I had hung his worn and gray two-tine cultivator hoe (with the bent left prong and chinked metal on the blade) up on the brown pegboard of the basement walls.

When I saw it there, it was too late. I was as upturned as the middle Georgia soil he sank this hoe into. Torn open by steel.

I saw you again, Granddaddy, with your knotted hands around this handle, bent over the obdurate soil, importunate as the punishing sun, living sermons I was too immature then to appreciate, planting images in generations.

I saw you today, Granddaddy. And you were even grander.