"In Response to 'Wherever mama Walks is Flowers' by Nathan Vulgamott" | by Gini Atwell

We're going for a post each day this week...

Today's selection is from a brand new intern (no, we do not refer to them as "greenhornes" at YEW, although...), Gini Atwell.  I asked the interns to comb through a few dozen issues of various magazines & journals to find a piece that spoke to them in some way & then write a response to it.  This is Gini's response to a poem by Nathan Vulgamott which first appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of SAGA, the literary magazine produced by nearby Augustana College.  Enjoy!

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"In response to: 'Wherever mama Walks is Flowers' by Nathan Vulgamott" | Gini Atwell

           

            I see Mama in the garden, burdened shoulders shaking in the tulips. The weight of the world rests upon those weathered shoulders, and a broken heart is all that keeps them from caving in. Sitting undetected on the front porch steps, I want to run to Mama and wipe the sweat and tears from her face, but I know there's nothing a silent child could ever do.

            Not so long ago, I remembered peeking from under the kitchen chairs at the end of long, summer days. Then, it was Daddy who collapsed on the floor, weeping and shaking in this muddy boots and overalls, blood on his hands from the womb of his favorite mare. Back then, it was Mama who pulled him up, who washed his face and hands and murmured kindness over a late-night dinner.

            I always wanted to be Mama, then, to be ox-strong and so wildly  beautiful. Seeing her now, I could scarcely recognize the woman kneeling in the dirt before me.

            When Daddy died, her strength went with him, buried in the family plot, as if saving a place for her body. Mama laid in bed for weeks, while the bread got stale and moldy, and the milk turned sour. The house was dusty and quiet during endless winter days, though at night I could her her muffled sobs in her sleep. As the frost lifted and the tulips sprung up from the earth, the weeds came with them, choking out the familiar reds and yellows.

           But today, I awoke to a clean table, soft new bread, and the smell of lilacs in the air-- the smell of Mama. Now, sitting on the stairs, a fresh glass of milk in my hands, I watch her sigh. Suddenly, through the shudders of her body, I see her tearing out the twisting weeds, watering the turned up ground with her tears. The sun hits her hair like a lackluster halo, and I silently send up a tiny prayer to Daddy. Although Mama seems so thin and dry, she pulls the weeds with vigor I never knew she had. She rips back the vines like tangled bedclothes and regrets, and through the morning haze, I can see the tulips blooming brighter than ever.