From the desk of
FRANCES-MARIE COKE
From the desk of
FRANCES-MARIE COKE
by Frances-Marie Coke
In the words of
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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