pluck

Bellies stuffed, we gather 'round
the antique grand where I composed
ditties in childhood. Leona plucks
ill-tempered keys, their intermittent plinks
piercing lyrics from “Somewhere
Over the Rainbow” as I listen
from my corner of the bench.
She and I are performing, once again
at the Metropolitan - the best kind of frolic
for a woman of eighty-three - bridging four
generations with a song. This brood
is our audience, donning
best behavior for the occasion
until she takes out a handkerchief,
blows her nose casually, and tucks
it away. “Aren’t those your panties?”
I squeal. She blushes and explains
how holes render them unfit to wear
but good for noses. Repurposing things,
my great-grandmother is once again
a problem solver. (And those men said
the lumber yard was no place for a widow!)
Each act of self reliance, I feel, is a message
for me to be a strong-minded woman.
A strong woman is an independent
woman. Strong women are able
to care for themselves when men don’t.
Remember the time she chopped the
trunk with an axe to get those car keys.
Remember how he defied her
to drive those children around all day,
and remember how she did it anyway, her red,
Irish temper streaming from the roots of her hair
to the slim fingers wielding that axe.
I too have this plucky, Irish gene,
waiting deep within,
growing impatient and ready.
East of her house, the train whistles
down the tracks where I once laid
pennies. It’s pulling heavy loads
of coal for its journey north. Oh, how I long
to hitch a ride in an empty car and hobo
from stop to stop, seeing beyond these red clay
hills of Cohutta, but it fails to kneel and crawl,
so I can climb on its back for the trip.
Clackety-clack, (pause), clackety-clack.
The cadence echoes 'round the bend where I fish
at the hatchery, strangling minnows with my fists.
I am left behind to find my own way,
to follow the echoes of a dream
to defy these naysayers with my own Irish hands.
“In time,” I say,
“time has a way of working things out."
For now I am a mother,
and fleeting feet tread quickly.
So play me another song, Leona,
and sing its lyrics in that crackled vibrato,
thick like tar.
Then, let me say, “Good bye,” this time.
I was too young the day your music stopped.