The night grandma peppered the trees
That grew bouquet-tight behind her house
With buckshot. Aural ink blots:
The epithets she shouted in harried
Twang into a dark infested with the standard
Medieval goblins and goons and good
Ol’ 21st Century meth heads as well,  

Country dark where the known coordinates
Of God’s green Earth—shaggy yard,
Fencerow choked/clotted with honey suckle and clematis
Slender county highway beyond the back forty   
Give way to what can’t be contained,
Distances reach back past lunar dusts and Olympic Mons’
moribund slopes and stars destined for disintegration,
dramatic and savage lustrous silences
ripped apart by the big bang staccato
of blasts in my general direction.  

So goes the story of the time my grandma
Didn’t try to shoot me.
I didn’t yell for fear of giving away
My location. We were all ultimately
Totally safe: the meth heads and monsters
Never actually arrived.  

We were talking a few days later 
when the topic of shooting at things
came up. I asked her what
She had been shooting at that night.
“Thought you were a stranger,” she insisted
In that endearing grandmotherly
Kind of way.

“What did a stranger ever do to warrant
That welcome?” I asked, syllables
Eroded by bites of apple pie that felt
Conciliatory, even if it was just routine.
“Just be glad you weren’t a stranger,”
She said, carving up another slice,
“else I wouldn’t have missed.”