I was very happy to hear that one of my poems is going to be published in December over at vox poetica, my friend Annmarie's wonderful site for poetry lovers. Annmarie has encouraged my efforts to get back to writing poetry, which I had not done in a long time, and I will always be grateful to her for that. During times of stress in my life poetry has been a great comfort.
Annmarie sent out an email a while back asking for contributions to a series called Contributor Series 7: The Confessional Diary of Bone. I love that title.
My poem is below. It was written about my great great grandmother Sarah Mahalie Nelson, a half-Cherokee lady who married my great great grandfather John T. Hasty well over a hundred years ago. For years, nobody in the family talked about the fact that she was part Cherokee. I believe some Cherokee women married white men in the North Georgia mountains, and thus didn't go to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.I don't have any diaries or letters from Sarah, and I know almost nothing about her life, but I feel sadness when I look at her photo, and that inspired the poem.
Sarah’s Eyes
I have come to understand that memory is biological.
When I look at the photos of my Cherokee great great grandmother Sarah,
her tiny skull,
her sad eyes,
I feel her despair. I have no words
for her story, only legends and suppositions, but her eyes –
Over a century, her eyes hold the truth.
My bones hold her stories, secrets.
She went deep into the mountains where they couldn’t find her
and stayed off the tearstained trail.
She married a white man,
took a white name, and bore him sons.
Her grandson/ my grandfather - Papa - he wore long limbs
from his father, a giant, angry man.
Was it the taint of mixed blood that caused Papa’s father
to tie the hands of his sons and beat them bloody?
Papa stopped the carnage
as soon as he was big enough to fight his father.
Or was it anger at Sarah
for turning away from her Cherokee family?
Papa turned away from that rage
and became a gentle giant,
a great warrior on the baseball field.
As an elder, he fed me bits of bread and honey
and read me stories.
Like Sarah,
he loved the sanctuary of mountains.
I lost Papa when I was nine years old.
I feel Papa in my bones though,
in the beat of the drums when I go to pow-wows.
I feel her inside me too, in those drums;
mute memories pulse in a newer heart, but
I always want to weep for what we lost.
By Dee Thompson
July 2010



Recent Comments