MEMORIES OF MAMA
Her foreign-born husband
called her Mama.
As did ten mischievous children,
the biscuits-and-gravy-fed boarders,
Indians from the nearby Pueblo,
and mixed-blood people in the dreary town.
Then - all the grandchildren called her Mama,
even me, the granddaughter she raised —
“My eleventh child,” she said.
Not everyone called her husband Papa.
A mountainous man with leathery hands,
his presence allowed no laughing.
A tough bargainer, he traded cattle
with the Indians and haggled in their language.
He sold fresh-butchered calves
to the locals and spoke Spanish.
At home he imposed his strict discipline
on the children and shouted in Arabic.
At night, he whispered to Mama in English --
a gentle way no one else knew in him.
Mama’s index memory spun back — scabbed fingers
from picking cotton in a desolate Texas town,
meeting a dark stranger at scrappy fourteen,
becoming his buckboard bride and
settling down in dusty Domingo, New Mexico.
Mama sat in her calico-cushioned rocker,
I snuggled by her used-up breasts
to hear stories I already knew.
We scoured an exhausted satchel --
yellowed family pictures,
baptismal certificates and birth records.
With those treasures, we relived her life.
Mama left the satchel and it’s bounty for me.
They bring back the memories and make me cry.
Without my old companion,
the pictures have no words.
Her foreign-born husband
called her Mama.
As did ten mischievous children,
the biscuits-and-gravy-fed boarders,
Indians from the nearby Pueblo,
and mixed-blood people in the dreary town.
Then - all the grandchildren called her Mama,
even me, the granddaughter she raised —
“My eleventh child,” she said.
Not everyone called her husband Papa.
A mountainous man with leathery hands,
his presence allowed no laughing.
A tough bargainer, he traded cattle
with the Indians and haggled in their language.
He sold fresh-butchered calves
to the locals and spoke Spanish.
At home he imposed his strict discipline
on the children and shouted in Arabic.
At night, he whispered to Mama in English --
a gentle way no one else knew in him.
Mama’s index memory spun back — scabbed fingers
from picking cotton in a desolate Texas town,
meeting a dark stranger at scrappy fourteen,
becoming his buckboard bride and
settling down in dusty Domingo, New Mexico.
Mama sat in her calico-cushioned rocker,
I snuggled by her used-up breasts
to hear stories I already knew.
We scoured an exhausted satchel --
yellowed family pictures,
baptismal certificates and birth records.
With those treasures, we relived her life.
Mama left the satchel and it’s bounty for me.
They bring back the memories and make me cry.
Without my old companion,
the pictures have no words.
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