Sample Poems by Linda Annas Ferguson
Cotton Mill Hill
The graveyard shift gravitates
down the hill toward fragments
of light in the distance, windows
rise in salutation from the dark earth.
Departing voices rasp in thin dispersion.
My father begins the long walk home.
Parasites of cotton cling to his clothes.
He wears them like a second skin.
His eyes grow accustomed
to the lack of light near the church.
He remembers grave robbers he surprised
last May, bones thrown about in the grass.
It had taken him hours
to return the dead
to the dignity they deserved,
restore the integrity of the turf.
The family never knew.
He had felt the lack and want
in the discarded gravedigger's shovel
as he gave back soil
to the cheated earth.
Later this morning, warm in his bed,
he will hoard his four hours
deep in the fermented smell of sleep,
cotton sheet stretched over his head.
In the evening,
he has a field to plow under.
Living Room
Because we are too many
for this house, a bed
shares the living room
with a Warm Morning stove.
A photo of the town taken from the air
hangs over the torn vinyl sofa.
All streets lead to the cotton mill,
a gray monument in the middle.
The only world we know is cramped
inside this worn wooden frame.
A seashell lamp from a beach
we've never seen burns for Daddy.
At dawn, he will walk home
from pulling two shifts,
pour cold coffee, make a sandwich
with an onion and a biscuit.
He will be sleeping when light
wakes us for school,
will leave for work
before we come home again.
We know each other from the warmth
of the fire he stokes for us,
from lessons we study
in the musk of his bed.
Portrait of Mama, Forgetting the Past
I often came home from school
to Mama ironing alone in her bedroom,
sprinkling water from a Coke bottle
to wet the wrinkles, following
her routine without thought,
cuffs first, then yoke, the body last.
She hardly spoke as she worked,
only once shared the name
of an old boyfriend, Chelsea Green.
I wondered if she wondered
how life would have been with him,
his name the color of summer,
as she stood over Dad's Sunday shirt
pressing the almost-white collar.
Sometimes she sang hymns
and stared out the window.
I never knew what she saw
or if all the beauty
in our ordinary backyard
was sufficient for her,
never knew when she was quiet
if she had forgotten the words
or if the girl inside her
had just stopped to listen.
Making Biscuits
Mother has never operated
a motor vehicle
or programmed a VCR,
never danced in my father's arms
or listened to the trill of crystal
from the flick of her fingernail.
Each day she rises at five
to the tin music of morning
and the monotony
under the measure
of her breath, her memories
like someone else's life.
She finds comfort
in repetition,
gets lost
in the act of every day.
Her mind wanders
past the window.
Her hands form biscuits,
the dough an ivory cloud
to smooth for her children.
She kneads it with such ease
it barely touches
the heart of her palm.