The words and tune to this old song float through my brain. Summer. Early morning yoga, coffee, horses fed, flowers watered, a lazy lunch: salad with feta, black beans with caramelized onions. Slouched, reading a book (The Return, Hasham Matar) on the sofa, feet crossed on edge of coffee table, patio doors open, I hear birdsong, the whir of black fans in the ceiling sea of white. Summer. Nap time. Awaken slowly, eyes watching cotton candy clouds barely move across an azure sky. Summer.
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Years of bones piled up. Cattle–calves, yearlings, the old–heaped 100 yards
northeast of the ranch house, upwind from the summer, southwest prevailing
winds. Mostly black baldies, a few Charolais. Old bones bleached white,
disintegrated. Some new bloated bodies rotting, nauseating. Others just sundried
hide stretched over skeletons. Drug here by tractor, the dead. Shipping fever, parasites,
drought, extreme weather.
A ranch’s history written in bones.
This poem praises my mother. It is page 17 of my memoir in poems, “On the Rim of Wonder”. It seems appropriate to republish it here for Mother’s Day.
Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed, and blond, my mother,
one fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s death, Dad said,
“Barbara was afraid of absolutely no one and nothing.” They married
late: 34 and 38. He adored her unconditionally. She filled my life
with horses, music, love, cornfields, hay rides, books, ambition. Whatever
she felt she had missed, I was going to possess: books, piano lessons, a
college education. Her father, who died long before I was born, loved fancy,
fast horses. So did she. During my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my
hysterical night coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her
in a wagon. With less than 100 pounds and lots of determination, she
stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri River Bottom,
strong, willful, free.
Life sometimes graces you with lovely surprises, the unexpected sunrise, flowers in unusual places, the rarely seen bobcat climbing the canyon wall. Today, tired, bag full of papers to grade, I entered my house, smelling a puzzling sweetness. The stage manger of Les Miserable lived with me two weeks. She left a bottle of red wine, a heartfelt note, and a bouquet, snowy lilies, golden roses, blue bells. Lillie scent pervades the room. I walk in beauty. 
Her mind wanders in the soot filled
dreams when she was eighteen and lost,
tried to commit suicide her first year in
college. Far from home with a homesick
roommate and people who ate this slimy
looking white stuff –grits–she’d never
heard of or seen. Crazy people who
thought black peoples’–they called them
colored–only use was playing loud
music to dance to. Who could adjust to
these southern belles riding horse to
hounds, dancing to music they couldn’t
touch with people they could never love.
In isolation she played piano for hours,
wrote depressing stories no one could read
and swallowed a bottle of bitter. Changed
her mind, vomited in the infirmary, made
volcanoes in chemistry class, flew around
Washington, D.C. during Kennedy’s
funeral to avoid her own.
Mom was tiny, tough, and pretty. She acquired the name Lewis because my grandparents had hoped for a boy and, for reasons I do not know, wanted a child named Lewis. My grandparents named her younger brother Louis. The following poem about my mother is one of the prose poems in my new book of poetry, On the Rim of Wonder, published last month by Uno Mundo Press. Currently you can purchase it from Amazon or if you are in Amarillo, at Hastings on Georgia. Shortly, it will be available on Kindle and signed copies can be ordered from me.
Barbie Doll
Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue-eyed and blond, my mother, one
fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s death, Dad said, “Barbara was
afraid of absolutely no one and nothing”. They married late: 34 and 38. He
adored her unconditionally. She filled my life with horses, music, love,
cornfields, hayrides, books, ambition. Whatever she felt she had missed,
my sister and I were going to possess: books, piano lessons, a college education.
Her father, who died long before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses. So did she.
During my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night coughing
with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon. With less than one hundred
pounds and lots of determination, she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying
across the Missouri River Bottom, strong, willful, free.
Week two of the prose poetry class:
“It is a blessing to live out your destino.” Julia Alvarez
Long ago, in the hot summer, I could hear the corn grow at night with the windows open in northwest Missouri. Rolling hills of corn and soybeans still clad the dark brown earth left by glaciers thousands of years ago. So much time has gone without my returning to this land: colleges in different states, marriages, jobs in cities.
My father lived ninety years on this farm his Swiss grandfather homesteaded. He yearned for distant lands, to explore, to learn. He loved the West, endless space, rugged mountains, canyonlands, wildness. When it snowed too much for school, he loaded us in the car, turned wheelies, and headed for Kansas City. His yearning to be a doctor died when very young–the only child left at home, caring for a diabetic mother, recovering from a failed youthful marriage before he met Mom.
He gave me his love of questioning, traveling, reading, trying the untried, a pride in the land and work, and a sense of wonder. This night, after shoveling out from a dangerous blizzard, I sit in front of a fire, write on a Western canyon rim, look at his parade saddle and the photo of the farm for which he felt so much pride, and cry: my destino.
It seems I cannot stop taking courses, or at least some courses–those dealing with art, literature, poetry, music. Perhaps the reason has something to do with the fact that from about 7:30 to 5 for five days a week, I teach math. And not just any math, but mostly math to teenagers who hate it, think they cannot do it, and complain considerably. I try to “save” them, inspire them, help them to see math’s usefulness in regular, ordinary adult life. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes….
My new poetry class started today, but it is very different from anything I previously studied. I am supposed to read and learn how to write prose poems. Now if I can just figure out exactly what is a prose poem versus, let’s say, flash fiction or memoir. I’ve read all the directions and a couple of Robert Bly prose poems and have decided it has a lot to do with imagery. This post is my first attempt. Still I am quite concerned that it is not really a prose poem and if not a prose poem, what is it. Please tell me.
She stands alone by the train tracks,
watching and waiting and dreaming.
Hobos no longer exist.
She remembers reading stories of life
when her great grandmother lived:
hobos begging for food, gypsies stealing
babies and telling fortunes, long days of
working in the corn fields, chopping weeds.
Her own family praises modernity:
tractors, riding lawnmowers, herbicides, pesticides,
electricity, TVs, dishwashers, fast cars, fast food, diet sodas,
cell phones, computers, DVDs, iPADs.
Now the only excitement lays in video games,
guns, and sex. She watches and waits and dreams.
Last night I planned to reblog this, my very first blog post from over three years ago. However, a big lightning and hail storm arrived; I turned off my computer. I did not want a lightning strike to ruin it. Lightning struck my house twice in the six and one-half years I have lived here; once it destroyed my TV.
Abraham Lincoln said we choose–or do not choose–happiness. When I was twenty something, I chose happiness, not the sappy, syrupy, cheery, but the deeper joy of cherishing the small, the unique, the everyday, smiling with sunsets, the song of the mockingbird in the spring, my horses running free, the nearly invisible bobcat climbing the canyon wall, the taste of fine coffee at the first wakeful moments in the morning, cooking for friends, taking a “property walk” with my grandson, laughing with the teenagers I teach. I am driven to do very little; obsessions, compulsions do not run me. I choose. Choose life, choose joy or choose whining, choose lamenting. But choose!! Be who you want to be; do what you want to do. Be YOU!!
Photograph is copyright of Anabel McMillen.
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