BabyBird,
Your story begins with a pile of leaves from the red maple
trees
growing in front of Mama and Daddy’s home.
A world away, I was just starting school.
A student was raking leaves for the BSU at the U of A.
He caught my Mama’s eye,
and she was not the type of Mama who had ever been caught
worrying over beaus and grooms.
She just handed him a broom.
On a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer
she was reading the paper.
I heard her say, “There’s my friend.”
I could not have known then
when she first said his name—
the road we traveled would be the same.
When he told Mama goodbye and handed her the broom—
the unsuspecting groom—
none of us ever would have guessed.
Seven falls down the road would find we three—
our family—
dancing with you in our arms
beneath the glow of the red maple trees
where he’d raked leaves seven years before.
Amy Holt Taylor 2005
No comments:
Post a Comment