All the earth sheds tears today

But all of heaven is rejoicing

How can I say good-bye when

I just learned how to say hello?

He crosses the schoolyard, climbs the fence

Into a meadow and is near the road

When he hears that loud voice calling out behind.

Since most of the teachers don’t feel at ease

Entering the meadows and wooded areas,

He sprints across the road and into

The stand of trees covering the nearest hills

Swiftly entering that grove of trees. As the noise

Fades away, he is in his favorite place.

He would stay there if he had a choice,

Not where he lived with Mom and Dad and Sis.

Now he enters the small brook running thorough.

His feet are refreshed by the cooling water—

So clear, that the pebbles glow,

Seeming to shimmer just beneath the surface.

He takes a small swig of water, knowing that

Its clean, sweet taste tingled his mouth and throat.

Now, far away in this a very special corner

Two maple trees hang like a shelter

Where the brook leaps over a small rock ledge.

 

 

Here he rests, keeping himself ever so still.

A squirrel appears, washes its face,

Takes a quick drink. Then off to his tree.

Now a rabbit darts by, cotton tail flying  high

While clear calls rise nearby—

From a titmouse, a swallow and the braggart crow.

One tiny bell sounds the approach of a cow

And that far off bark sounds like the dog who

Is his friend but growls at every stranger.

 

With great hunger, he samples some tidbits

Of nature’s fare, first an Indian radish, then

A berry or two. Chewing now on the twig

Of sassafras root and cheered by the

Whispering autumn winds as he enjoys

The pungent smells from crushed mint leaves

And the wild asters’ perfume.

Long shadows remind him of this day’s end.

Dad expects everyone home at dinner time.

With one last look, he is off and gone.

With week-by-week installments eked out of her Depression Era salary as a typist-clerk, my mother bought a piano, a Baldwin console, slightly larger than a spinet, in gleaming mahogany wood. Each week she visited the store, stroked the piano’s edges, then urged by the store’s owner, she might play a few notes. Each week she feared her piano would be sold to someone paying full price in spite of the proprietor’s promise to keep this one piano for her alone.

Then after it was at last hers, she had to leave it behind when she followed her husband to California where there were good jobs to be had now that America was fighting in WW2. The piano had to be left behind in storage, awaiting packing fees and transportation fees yet to be earned and a living space large enough to give the instrument room to resonate, to sing, to hum in the evenings or weekend afternoons. All those memories and futures waited back in West Virginia while she made a home in a two and one-half room cottage far away on the West Coast where she waited.

In California she worked and saved and dreamed of piano music till there was money enough to ship it to the small craftsman-style home where there was room enough for her cherished piano. With the instrument came sheet music to which she added more and which I learned to play as the years went on. But long before I had lessons, before I learned to talk, I often fell asleep to the music played with my mother’s light touch on the treasured piano that came from all the way from West Virginia.

 

Once again she is packing up

Another year, gone—

Pregnant, nursing,

With toddlers clinging

To her skirt,

She is moving once again.

 

Every year another town

Another babe

Through coal-dusted years

Including the short stay

In the one room, dirt floored

Residence provided

By the masters of coal

Till she refuses to stay put

Just this once.

 

At last a year passed

With no new birth,

Though she grows big

The next year and every

Two years thereafter–

Eleven boys, four girls.

Finally, after the last is born,

They settle in a lasting home.

 

Of the fifteen some marry,

Some die too soon.

Some live with her

Some live far away.

One brought her his diploma

After high school graduation.

 

But all return annually

Drawn by love of family,

The love instilled by her.