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The Sunday Poem: Lee Francis IV... Untitled, October 15

As beautiful as this season can be, there is still an undercurrent of approaching winter. And life...well, it has its own seasons.

Lee Francis IV has appeared in Words On A Wire, Moccasin Telegraph, Earthships Anthology and A Bigger Boat. He was a member of the 2006 Albuquerque Slam Team, coach of the 2008 Albuquerque Slam Team and a member of the 2008 LoboSlam National Champion Team. He currently teaches at the Native American Community Academy.

Untitled, October 15

Your mother is in the bakery
feeling the heat of her age and the crescent moon over her shoulder
she is rolling dough against dull oak
hand fulls of flour and she is the queen of morning frost
fingers making vague ancient signs in the pre-natal bread
until all the parts of this world are the first snow
two weeks away. Your mother is in the bakery
doing what mothers do two weeks before the ground turns
cold, two weeks before they sing their stories to the sky, two weeks
before the buds are forgotten for a time. She bends
at the waist, her shoulders cave in on themselves and
it seems as if she will not die from cancer two weeks from now
but that she will simply fold in on herself

until only her particles can be seen in the early sunlight
making unfamiliar shapes that resemble trapezoids
in the folds of a towel covered in dust at the end of
the day that arrives in quiet colors settling like flour
on the hands of your mother.

Poetry submissions are always welcome. Email theditchrider@gmail.com.

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Comment by Margaret Randall on November 21, 2010 at 8:52am: This is an astonishing poem. It has everything: the facts, the emotion, the feelings. I want to imagine this is not based on reality, but fear it is. If not, you have done an exceptional job of giving us the story beyond the story. Thank you.

Comment by cathyray on November 21, 2010 at 10:38am: l look forward to the Sunday morning poetry & I am usually touched enough to comment. This morning I had to step away, come back in a bit & reread. I saw her, I felt her in the room.

Comment by Don McIver on November 21, 2010 at 12:54pm: "dough against dull oak," love the musicality of that line.

The rhythm is fantastic actually propelled syntactically by the punctuation...Wonderful stuff Mr. Francis.

Comment by Ben Moffett on November 21, 2010 at 1:55pm: Margaret Randall's comment mirrors my thoughts, Lee. Thanks for sharing this piece on a Sunday morn.

Comment by Dee Cohen on November 21, 2010 at 5:05pm: Very effective poem. You've really captured the emotion here. Through the use of repetition, I get a sense of ritual and a sense of dread for this woman's fate. Well done.
Thank you for the poem. Dee