| "
DANCING WITH MY MOTHER"
Mother and I twirl, laughing and dancing
in the streets of Carroll.
At times like this she says she can
really tell that I`m her daughter.
She recalls how her own mother warned,
"You must practise restraint; you so
easily go overboard!"
We laugh, realizing Grandma had a point,
but that it's okay to be alive.
Since Mother's husband died she
has been set free.
She is over her grief,
making up for lost time with
books, botanical arts, local causes.
Lugging wicker baskets up
the Smokey Mountaains,
she sips wine from crystal
and has loving friendships.
I am hopeful that I, too, will get
younger as I get older
and someday, on a city street,
will twirl and laugh
in the wind with a grandchild.
I will say, "I can tell you are from
my bloodline. Your great-granadmother
danced on the streets with me,
just like you."
Annie O'Dell, 2003
"
EMBRACING INSANITY "
"Be that way! Walk on!"
yelled the beautiful artist
sitting on the front steps
of her apartment house.
Anyone else would have run,
Instead, intrigued,
she looked at his thin body
leaning against the brick wall,
saw the sway of his gold scarf
as he got up
and crossed the cobblestone street.
She laid a blanket in the hall.
Like a stray dog, he slept there.
In the early dawn, outside her door
to the outside world, she'd hear him leaving.
Later, when he howled to her
in the night, like an alley wolf,
she howled back.
At times, they shared
angry philosophy
and she longed to embrace his insanity.
One day, like a passing storm,
his smell and feel were gone.
But his shadow stayed, whispering,
and she wondered if, one day,
he would send his ear in a box.
Annie O'Dell
|
"
HEIRLOOM PSALM "
Progressisons
of dishes
marshal the generations,
each era's exemplar reflecting
the aspirations of its women--
good china
rough crockery
clay pots
hollow gourds--
all destined for use
in that most elemental
of human requirement.
She prepareth a table
before me
in the presence
of my daughters.
Dene Hellman
"
IF THE TRUTH BE KNOWN "
It was a phrase much used
by the home folks
to button down the wind
hurling the debris of their lives
past their honest intent.
The ragged petals
of the daisy that counted off
"He loves me, he loves me not,"
the weathered shingles
of twisted ambitions,
the clotted dust
of daily conceits,
are all seen in
the aftermath of the gale
to have been tested out
on the bedrock power
that cautioned,
"If the truth be known..."
Dene
Hellman
|
