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My Mother's Trunk

My Mother's Trunk plagues me, squats black in the corner, clutches cold remnants. From Richmond town brought down by train, schoolmarm, scholar, believer, nitpicker, woodchopper, huddled thin bodies nearer the pot-bellied stove. Latin, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Milton, Bulfinch's mythology sink to the bottom, time only for spellers, grammars, arithmetic--the seeds- their flowers early bitten. Wild highland tunes first fiddled when forbidden pipes hung silent in the rafters stirred blood and bone, fierce invocations lured her heart from books and chalk to the high ridge and a fiddling man-- primrose and bramble entwined. She wore ashes-of-roses and wildflowers to wed, Bible inscribed with seven generations of begats and their begotten, tiny high-button shoes not fit for the ridge, put back for a time that never came. A woman brought too old to bed-- the fiddler her undoing-- cherished my first crooked stitches on a nine-patch, a copper curl matches the braid on my shoulder, lace I could not trace, needle rusted in its tangled nest. Shakespeare, Milton, Walter Scott, Caesar's Latin, and myth see candlelight the first time since the primrose rambled to the ridge. In yellowed margins, elegant copperplate script reveals the schoolmarm of the valley. A broken bow and broadside http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Appalachian Review University of North Carolina Press

My Mother's Trunk

Hicks, Jane
Appalachian Review , Volume 31 (3) – Jan 8, 2003
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Berea College
ISSN
1940-5081
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

plagues me, squats black in the corner, clutches cold remnants. From Richmond town brought down by train, schoolmarm, scholar, believer, nitpicker, woodchopper, huddled thin bodies nearer the pot-bellied stove. Latin, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Milton, Bulfinch's mythology sink to the bottom, time only for spellers, grammars, arithmetic--the seeds- their flowers early bitten. Wild highland tunes first fiddled when forbidden pipes hung silent in the rafters stirred blood and bone, fierce invocations lured her heart from books and chalk to the high ridge and a fiddling man-- primrose and bramble entwined. She wore ashes-of-roses and wildflowers to wed, Bible inscribed with seven generations of begats and their begotten, tiny high-button shoes not fit for the ridge, put back for a time that never came. A woman brought too old to bed-- the fiddler her undoing-- cherished my first crooked stitches on a nine-patch, a copper curl matches the braid on my shoulder, lace I could not trace, needle rusted in its tangled nest. Shakespeare, Milton, Walter Scott, Caesar's Latin, and myth see candlelight the first time since the primrose rambled to the ridge. In yellowed margins, elegant copperplate script reveals the schoolmarm of the valley. A broken bow and broadside

Journal

Appalachian Review – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 8, 2003

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