My beautiful granddaughters
(I will honor Cameron with his page later)
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| Cadence 4 months |
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| Kalaya 16 moths |
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| Jaelynn 12 (Tiffiny too) |
Cries of the Spirit is a very nice collection of poems by women compiled by Marilyn Sewell. I went searching in that book for more by Margaret Atwood after posting Boat,
which many of you told me you particularly enjoyed. This is just the
third portion of a five part poem. As a grandmother I fully
understand how passionately one loves her grandchildren (and great
grandchildren). I was fortunate to have both grandmothers in my life
well into my thirties, and I was close to both of them. But for some
reason, I never suspected my great grandmothers would have felt the same
fierce connection to me. Reading poems like these help me realize the
connection I feel for my "decedents" would likely have been felt by my great grandmothers too. That's nice to think about.
Five Poems for
Grandmothers (excerpt)
Margaret
Atwood
iii
How
little I know
about
you finally.
The
time you stood
in
the nineteenth century
on
Yonge Street, a thousand
miles
from home, with a brown purse
and
a man stole it.
Six
children, five who lived
she
never said anything
about
those births and the one death,
her
mouth closed on a pain
that
could neither be told not ignored.
She used to have
such a sense of fun.
Now girls, she
would say
when we would
tease her.
Her anger
though, why
that would curl
your hair,
though she never
swore.
The worst thing
she could say was:
Don’t be
foolish.
At eighty she
had two teeth pulled out
and walked the
four miles home
in the noon sun,
placing
her feet
in
her own hunched shadow.
The
bibbed print aprons, the shock
of
the red lace dress, the pin
I
found at six in your second drawer,
made
of white beads, the shape of a star.
What
did we ever talk about
but
food, health and the weather?
Sons
branch out, but
one
woman leads to another
Finally
I know you
through
your daughters,
my
mother, her sisters,
and
through myself.
Is
this you, this edgy joke
I
make, are these your long fingers,
your
hair of an untidy bird
is
this your outraged
eye,
this grip
that
will not give up?
Legacies
Nikki Giovanni
her grandmother called her from the playground
“yes, ma’am,” said the little girl
“i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less
dependent on her spirit so
the little girl said
“i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and I guess nobody ever does
