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Idlewild Nights

by Frances-Marie Coke

Down from the fretwork of the dining hall,

past the breakfront, where December crockery

rested through the year, the keys of Dadda’s piano

yellow with the seasons, dressed for evensong,

descended one by one into a wooden plunk,

keeping time with swirls and scrawls, faded

from the tattered pages he uncurled 

across a frame, tracing clefs and trebles,

as his home-schooled fingers raised the songs

that changed Galina’s hat shop to a church,

a children’s stage, a lover’s breath, a dream.

 

Out on the veranda wrapped round the house,

where croakers changed their slimy skins

and slithered down the peeling grey to slip

our busy eyes, Gramma rocked the wicker chair,

sweeping back my hair, spinning tales, easing in the night  

with Mary and the Baby, Anancy and

Tookomah, Charge of the Light Brigade

and hosts of golden daffodils she’d never seen

but knew by heart.

 

She murmured stilling melodies

of all things bright and beautiful, (sowing seeds

for dreams of copper pennies wedged between

my jam jars of paradise plum and mint-balls)

and yes, “Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.”

Nestling me against her breast, she closed

the door on all the shifting worlds I’d left behind.

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