I do not care if my daughter
forgets all my empty stories
of blank cityscapes,
of colorless times,
of limping struggles.
My daughter must remember–
remember, keep alive
stories of her grandmother,
stories of lineage, of place, of era,
of strength in women, in family,
of struggle containing meaning
like Jacob’s struggle by the river—
stories living in her DNA,
strengthening the helix of her history.
She must remember,
pass on to her progeny with pride
in her spirit living, not here in this place,
in this dusty Lonestar state,
but among those mountains
bathed in stained glass colors
at sunrise and sunset,
or smeared gauzy blue at noon,
or at times, shrouded in grieving fog.
So many times, I have watched my daughter sleeping,
a toddler she seems still at twenty-three–
I marvel at how that can be–
Her lips parted just a bit, slightly swollen in sleep,
her lashes long, thick, and dark against her cheek,
so like her grandmother’s lashes,
a trait I did not inherit,
her breathing whispers youthful innocence,
her tousled hair that of a child wearied from play–
And I— I believe I see some ghost umbilical cord stretching
from her, leaving the house, and could I travel it,
follow it—I know where it should lead me–
a black cinder block house on stilts somewhere
miles outside Charleston, West Virginia—
so far up into the mountains
that as we drove the one time I saw it
I felt tilted back as if for
a rocket take off to some distant star—
my aunt’s eyes send a flood down the valleys of her face,
my mother gasping at sight of that tall cinder block house,
narrow and black with four small windows in the front,
unfriendly and uninviting it appears to me,
as it stands in the dirt yard
with a single clothesline, tires,
some chickens pecking the dirt around the stilts,
contrasting the lush green mountain top
touching the sky behind it.
My recalcitrant 13-year-old self thinks–
How the fuck does someone build
a cinder block house on stilts like that?
And black? Why black?
This is where the ghost umbilical cord
leaving my daughter leads me,
this place, this link to the earth—
to the spirit within this earth
where her grandmother,
my mother grew,
nurtured by the dirt, the green mountain tops,
the harshness of poverty in harsh times,
coal mines and cave ins, winter fevers,
spring forest escapes from ideas
of death and survival.
Where I too am linked,
bound even as I struggled
to free myself for so many years.
Now, at this age, I know it was this spirit, this link,
that poured its strength into me
when I needed it though my youth
scrubbed me of the wisdom to recognize it.
My daughter must know her grandmother’s stories,
of how hope lived in an election during the Great Depression,
her great-grandfather forbid even his wife to take a switch
to of one his children on the day of FDR’s election,
of how death can be heard walking the floors of empty rooms
when the family gathers round a dying toddler,
of how potato sack dresses itch,
of how her great-grandfather built the cinder block house
after a snow melt flood washed away the wood house
and nearly killing himself thinking he had lost his family,
of how to hunt rabbits and skin them,
of how squirrel tastes better than possum,
of how to hold your head when you
ask the company store man for credit,
of how grief over the death of twin toddlers
can turn your mother silent
of how your father explains the death of children
kills a mother’s heart,
of how an orange for Christmas is the greatest of all treasure,
of how it is tedious work to darn socks,
of how joyful it feels to go without shoes in the summer,
of how rich and important you can feel
when new shoes arrive in the fall,
of how when a boy asks to escort you home from church,
you better not walk more than six feet in front of your mother,
of how to watch for your shoeless mother walking home
in the snow from the Post Office in Charleston because
you know she only wears her shoes to church to keep them good,
and how to warm her feet so she doesn’t lose anymore toes—
All these stories and more,
my daughter must know
must remember,
breathe and bleed life
in the telling of them to her children
for they are woven, a tapestry,
double helix patterned within us,
our earthen souls.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 