Tour
      for Estelle Uleberg Swanson
  
  
 Not so long ago, I heard her tell
 the story. We were at her kitchen table
 in the old farmhouse near Madelia. 
 Was she making bread? Just Estelle,
 her daughter, Julia, and me. And Maggie,
 the black dog, on the wooden floor.
  
 Maybe I had mentioned my teen-age tale,
 the thrill of climbing the Tour Eiffel,
 then gazing out over the rainy rooftops
 of Paris? Estelle kept kneading the flour,
 then gestured out the window. “When 
 I was three, I climbed to the top
  
 of the windmill,” she said, dividing
 the dough into loaves of bread, 
 patting them into their metal pans.
 She was playing. Her father had turned
 away, then turned back, saw her, hand
  
 over hand, ascending the steel 
 frame of the high Aermotor. 
 He followed, without a sound, fearful
 she would turn around, panic. Oh, if she fell,
 like a falling star!
 But her gaze was far

 off over the flat cornfields,
 watching the grey sky shift,
 form a rainbow, shimmer
 like ribbons, over the blue silo.
 She barely noticed her father’s arms
 or felt her feet touch the safe ground.
  
  
 Leslie Schultz