The constant creaking that attended
her last years is lost to me.
I was two--
maybe a few months over--
when the motion stopped.
But I have pictures of a little me on
her legs in a rocking chair
my hair blown by some everlasting breeze
her hand an autumn decoration
against the spring green of my dress.
I took up motion very young
rolling instead of crawling and later
whirling dizzily as children will
looking up at the spinning sky.
It was the same sky
that eyed her hotly in the Texas noon
as she bent
and plucked
and bent
and plucked the cotton
blocking the insistent inner tug
until she filled the sack.
She told my mother
that she didn't know
how many children she'd had
beacuse she couldn't count
the one who never breathed--
the ones who were born as she squatted in the corner
over a pile of flour sacks and piece quilts--
the ones she wrapped in clean white handkerchiefs
and buried in shoeboxes
from Sears and Roebuck.
She told
of holes dug with an old shovel
its rusted tip collapsing
as it broke the ground's dry veins.
I see her in my mother's words
in the pale green hospital light
gather the tubes and I.V.'s
in her hand like a sash
as she struggled to get up and go
to the rocking chair in the corner.
My mother shakes her head at superstition
when she tells the story
sure that moving and living are unrelated
but when I pull back the screen door
and walk outside
I feel the pull of the wind
and I hear the creaking of nodding trees.
Janna O'Donnell
copyright 1992
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Comments: 64
defiantly a ten
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This is my first time reading your poetry, and I enjoyed it very much.
Your words radiate to the reader the creaking of bones, the sadness.
A fine poem.
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