farm girl
a wall-sized picture window played the view
of geraniums in a large brick planter box in
her back yard.
a few feet beyond, slender trees dressed from
tip-top to trunk danced under hot Texas sunshine.
further up to, and along the horizon of farmland -
flat, treeless, and pregnant with crops - the sound
of wind played telephone wires on highway violins.
she sat straight-backed, rigid on her sofa and watched
this mosaic of her life, of every life that passed her
window through decades of birthings.
she sat alone, memories her only fading friends,
their voices muffled, muddled and vying for
attention - no - screaming for recognition in
waning light of autumn.
she knew her children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren would remember -
remember if even her own recollections
scattered on prairie dust along ancient,
ever changing highways, as those trees
undressed under heaven for a lingering,
dreamless sleep.
Poem © 2012 R. Burnett Baker
Photo © 2012 R. Burnett Baker
Photo of Ina Wilkins Stovall taken about 1922, photographer unknown. The photographer who took this photo of my grandmother may have been my great-grandfather, Robert J. Stovall who was an avid photographer in the early 20th century. This scene was painted on canvas by my aunt Ina Jean Stovall Garner in 1972. That will be another story!
what a prompt that photo would make...so much story in it....
ReplyDeleteI love it
and the poem that goes with it...
ah our mothers and grandmothers
what they have lived and seen
I love your poem about your grandmother. This photo of her reminds me of one of my mother back in those days. There never seemed to be grass growing in yards. I wonder when people in the south started having grassy yards... it must have been after World War II when families were newly made and homes built that appearance of yards became important.
ReplyDelete