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| Jill Wellington |
Legacy
(after Ted Kooser’s poem of the same title)
I’ve spent almost fifty years trying to encourage you
with the poems I’ve written, to remember my people
as if they’d been yours – moments tart as licorice root,
with my parents, grandparents, brother and sisters –
knowing that one day we’ll all be gone, and without
memory, the poems I’ve written will have to go it alone.
I owe my people so much. I want them to shine forth
like heavenly stars, each with its own brilliance, its own
trajectory, my father climbing a cedar slat ladder
to pick cherries in the orchard, mother’s hands already
mired in flour, my grandmother stomping her feet
by the new TV for a home run, bottom of the ninth,
my uncle pursing his lips to a silver flute, my aunt
winding her dark hair in a figure eight, which will fall
in a veil of sheen at eventide, and when nudged aside,
will reveal another slim neck, one perhaps birthed
in your own bed of quilts, that child now dancing
in a field of daisies, twirling warm and free in a red cape.
(Italicized passages are from Kooser’s poem.)
© Carol Barrett
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| Carol Barrett |
Carol Barrett began writing poetry to support the widowed women she was counseling. Her most recent book is READING WIND. Currently living in Oregon, Carol supervises creative dissertations for students at two universities.
The images in this poem reach into my heart. Thank you!
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