A Sea of Melancholy
She sailed upon a gentle sea of melancholy-brave oars dipping.
She was awash with long ago laments which I could not guess.
Her movements were slow.
Her eyes never darted-they oozed from side to side-
tiny lagoons abutting her sea-
and languidly
she spoke to me.
'I have had so much sadness in my life
young'un and time was I was a bright young thing
but life can wear you down-only so many things can go wrong
before you put your finger to your head and imagine its a gun.'
Friends die, she said, I'm 93 and three husbands buried,
even most of the children dead.
Yet God keeps me lingering on, I think, way past my time.'
My great grandmother had this sad dignity, layers of laments
speaking to herself as much as to me.
'I wanted to know her, her life, and I was her great-great grandchild
eager to know who and where she came from.
She would sit, in her high-backed chair smoking little cigars
starting a story and then abandoning it. Some times she finished
a story but you never could be sure, because her voice would drift
off into memory.
'I was rambunctious' she was saying.' ran off the reservation, barely 20-
they were trying to marry me off to an old white man, half blind, and crazy.
'I was having none of that.
Walked right out and hopped the 401 freight, cap down passing myself off as a boy.
Had me a good old time too.
Them days people hunkered down in the freight cars and never spoke, looking
for a gin bottle and the next stop.
I was fine from the Dakotas to Chicago where in the last leg, a man noticed me
saying 'you ain't no boy are ya? '
Cutest boy, not much older than me, his pockets full of bread loaves and he
handed me one saying ' You look hungry.'
Gave me one of those big-as-a -house smiles of his and I was a goner from the start.
That is how love is sometimes just comes over ya and you just hold on for dear
life because you are not in control. It was like that with me and him.
Called me his 'box-car baby' and cuddled down with me for the final ride into
the city, eating bread and spinning dreams.
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poem by Lonnie Hicks
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