Poet Albert Huffstickler's birthday was yesterday, December 17 -- also Pope Francis' and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning's.
The only other successful poetry group I've known was in Huff's little Austin apartment. This group was called The Hyde Park Poets.
Huff always asked us to write a poem for the winter holidays, so I have done. It's more like a short short story isn't it? But I don't bother to worry about that. I'm worried about the mothers with children seeking asylum at our southern border, thrown into detention camps, let go with nothing to find their way across the country on long bus rides. This is about just one of them.
St. Nicholas' night is December 6. Where I was born, a German American town, St. Nic's night was still observed when I was a child. My own family didn't do it -- have us hang a stocking at the foot of the bed, December 6 -- but my cousins did. They were not especially good all year, these cousins, if you ask me, but even so they got nifty things in those stockings. If you haven't been good, St. Nic is supposed to leave you a piece of coal or bundle of sticks. The "old person" is sitting in for St. Nic, I think.
There are some Spanish words, but most of them are explained with English nearby. The blanket is in bright colors
indígenos, meaning Indian. In ola de frío, ola means leaf, literally, but the phrase means a cold spell. Los jefes means the chiefs, the bosses (of the drug cartels, the police, local gansters, etc. They're all in cahoots.) No tenemos nada means "We have nothing."
It's really in two justified columns, and I like it that way, but it wouldn't transfer from Word.
Mother
and Child
(Saint Nicholas’ Night,
San Antonio)
There the young mother
in corner of old pew
with child in her arms needing more warmth,
especially this daughter coughing, weariness
from coughing too often in her
dark eyes,
fatigue in the mother’s face as well, as well
there has to be, however young she is, herself,
after what they’ve both
been through,
through la hielera, the
freezer, customary
lodging for women and
children detained by
ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
after their coming through México
-- itself
made cold-hearted now by threats from
los jefes below and above --
and through all
of this not understanding
why, once here, the rich norteños cannot
afford leñas
for warmth, or pieces of coal
if that’s what they use in a cold spell
(una ola
de frío, another mother used -- to tell her
it wasn’t always this way here,
this cold)
though not on
purpose here like la hielera
at
the detention center, to keep other
mothers from trying to bring their children
to safety, not meant to hurt them so that others
would learn of it and not
come.
She decides to
pray to San Antonio here in
this cold chapel in this city in Texas named
for
him, in whatever kind of church this is,
whatever kind, in this city named for
him.
O gentle and loving
St. Anthony, [she prays
silently, certainly in Spanish] whose heart
was ever full of human
sympathy, whisper my
petition into the ears of the sweet Infant who
loved to be folded in
your arms; and the
gratitude of my heart will ever be yours.
If we could safely
reach Florida [she adds,
after pausing to listen to her
daughter cough
deeply] and be warm there
so she can be strong
and play in the sun and grow up to go to school
and
someday truly love and someday
have a child of her own?
An old person comes
to sit beside her,
offering a small blanket, light, bright with
colors indígenos. Tells her to keep it
for the bus ride, says
the bus will be cold, too.
Asks her if
she has any money.
Looks away from her
tears when she has to say,
“No, no tenemos nada,” then gives her the first
money
from this country that she has ever seen, the first money
of any kind
that she has seen
since the little she
carried
was soon taken.
In a few hours
her daughter can take the medicine again.
Maybe now it will help, after they’ve rested with the blanket
around
them both. When the little one sleeps
she will pray again,
but this time for all of them, for all mothers everywhere
in the world
who are trying to find a way for their children to be free
from
violence and slavery. Yes, all mothers
and children everywhere,
but especially these others who have come so far,
suffered so much,
wanted so long to be safe, waiting together in this ola de frío
to move on to warmth,
tomorrow or the next day.
And maybe she will pray
to some
other saint, another,
not just to San Antonio.
[written Dec. 13, 2016 after Dec. 6, 2016,
Interfaith Welcoming Coalition effort at
Mennonite Church of San Antonio]
*******************************************************************************
Heard Billy Collins read three poems last night on the Lake Woebegone radio hour. Did anyone else hear him? The selections seemed quite inappropriate to the season, but I'm sure most people feel differently. (I like our poems better than his, even if we did come together because of Poetry 180.)
So how about some more Christmas/holiday poems, folks? If you send them to me at sylviamanning@yahoo.com, I'll post them here on the blog for you.
And just in case nobody's told you yet: Merry Christmas!
