Mother

The photograph fades, turns yellow,
but the woman still sits erect
on a velvet chair, her piled hair
adorned with combs, her bodice tight and smooth,
sleeves in folds, her skirt billows,
one child at her feet, one beside her—
she is beautiful.
If time shadowed her proud smile
with work-worn hands, tremulous mouth,
the fierce hawks in her eyes
sent him howling like a beaten dog.
Her children remember the odor
of home-baked bread, a table bright
with silver, white with linen
where the farm rubbed its elbows,
numb fingers hanging out sheets
in freezing weather, young and hungry minds
fed with books and magazines from
her saved chicken money. She bent
like a tree in the wind, scarred by
wounds of love and labor.
But now in the picture she lifts
her beautiful proud head, innocent
of praise, of tears, or storm clouds
threatening the sky at sunset.