|
Accessible * Useful * Enjoyable Poetry |
|
Linda Fox-Weaver |
|
The First Dress You Sewed |
|
You don’t remember how your tears dropped on the dark green fabric with gold swirls. A pricked finger. Tissue lines stained with your blood.
Did you wish you were back in your daydreams with a hoe in your hands under the Alabama sun, peanuts sprawled at your feet, boll weevils mating in the cotton field?
You didn’t dream that you’d be thousands of miles from those fields living in a mountain state , two young girls in school, a baby boy asleep, three more children yet unseeded, a husband at work.
Did you dream that making clothes would be harder than pulling those weeds, shelling peas or churning butter?
I put my young arm around you that day, Mother.
Now, I remember you in that dress made with tears, the clear buttons ringed with gold, set-in sleeves, the collar trimmed in golden braid, the glitter — all dimmed by your smile. |
|
Poet Reads Poem |