Laura Weldon
When
people tell me their largest stories I am helpless as a page under pen.
A woman told me how, as a child of 11, she struck out when her grandparents were ignored rather than served at a restaurant in the deep South. Her anger was so heated that she used the restaurant’s complementary matches to start the place on fire.
It
wasn’t entirely the content of the memory or the force in her voice. It was the
way she strung words together; spare yet detailed. She talked about her
grandmother’s arthritic hands picking up and putting down a salt shaker. She
described her grandmother's dark green dress and sensible heels, the patient
smile she wore even though no one came to take their order. Before this
raised-up-North granddaughter could utter a word of complaint she was shushed
by her grandmother's stern look. As her grandparents stood to go the girl
ducked into the cloakroom and in seconds set to smoldering the hair oil-soaked
fedoras left there by white gentlemen. Of the fire she said little, except that
the restaurant was forced to turn everyone away that day.
A teen described how, when he was a small child, his mother got so strung out that she'd leave him alone for days at a time.
He
ended most sentences with “you hear me” and “wasn’t nothing” as he talked about
licking his fingers before running them along the insides of drawers and
cupboards to find crumbs. He said his mother got angry if she caught him
sleeping curled next to the apartment door. She’d yell, “I didn't raise no
dog." When his story ended, a refrain continued. He said “wasn’t nothing”
four times, each repetition softer until his moving lips made no sound at all.
An elderly woman recounted the story of union busters coming by their cabin at supper time to beat up her father, who'd been organizing his fellow coal miners.
She
didn’t recognize her own family any longer but vividly remembered this tale
from her earliest years. Her words were impressions. I saw her mother standing
fearfully at the door insisting her husband wasn’t home while the children
clustered behind her gaped in alarm. I envisioned this little girl, finding the
presence of mind to hide her father’s dinner dishes. “Just laid ‘em in the
stove with a cloth over,” she said. When the men barged in they found only
enough place settings for mother and children on the table. They left, never
looking under the porch where her father hid. She had no other stories left to
tell. This one was large enough for a lifetime.
Not
only do I feel what they’re saying, I’m awestruck by how they say it.
When
people talk about extremes they’ve experienced they speak as poets do. They
rely on verbal shorthand made up of sensory description and metaphor. They
drift from past to present, change viewpoints, dip into myth and scripture.
Often they end abruptly, as if what they’re trying to say can’t truly be said.
Their stories, powerful already, gain a sort of beauty that sends ordinary
language aloft. It’s truth that trembles. To me, it’s poetry.
Laura Grace Weldon is the author of a poetry collection titled Tending as well as Free Range Learning, a handbook of natural learning. Laura
lives on a small farm with her family where she works as an editor and blogs optimistically about learning, creative living, and mindfulness. Her poetry
has appeared in such places as Christian Science Monitor, J Journal, Literary Mama, The
Shine Journal, Mom Egg Review, Red River Review,
Shot Glass Journal, Iodine Poetry Journal, and Pudding House. Connect with her
at lauragraceweldon.com
This put me into a time warp... I was swept up into the spirituality of your visions... and I haven't landed quite yet...
ReplyDeleteLove this
ReplyDeleteOh Laura, this is wonderful.
ReplyDelete