"Names" by Ruth Stone

My grandmother's name was Nora Swan.
Old Aden Swan was her father. But who was her mother?
I don't know my great-grandmother's name.
I don't know how many children she bore.
Like rings of a tree the years of woman's fertility.
Who were my great-aunt Swans?
For every year a child; diphtheria, dropsy, typhoid.
Who can bother naming all those women churning butter,
leaning on scrub boards, holding to iron bedposts,
sweating in labor?
My grandmother knew the namesof all the plants on the mountain.
Those were the namesshe spoke of to me. Sorrel, lamb's ear,
spleenwort, heal-all;never go hungry, she said, when you can
gather a pot of greens.
She had a finely drawn head under a smooth cap of hair
pulled back to a bun. Her deep-set eyes were quick to notice
in love and anger.
Who are the women who nurtured her for me?
Who handed her in swaddling flannel to my great-grandmother's
breast?
Who are the women who brought my great-grandmother tea
and straightened her bed? As anemone in midsummer, the air
cannot find them and grandmother's been at rest for forty years.
In me are all the names I can remember-pennyroyal, boneset,
bedstraw, toadflax-from whom I did descend in perpetuity.