POEMS TO MY MOTHER, Althea Romeo-Mark
Dedicated to “Teacher Daisy”, mother, teacher, role-model
But I Too Must Move On
(For Daisy Valborg Marsh-Romeo)
Wish you would
live forever
that no links
our touch, our voices
be broken
between generations.
Wish I had not
gotten old enough
to notice you
growing older,
and get annoyed with you
for not remaining young.
Wish you would
stay around
to be great grand
and great, great grand
to witness
your roots expand
across oceans and continents.
Wish I could capture
our adventures
in a camera’s flash
freezing us in time
like characters
on the Grecian urn.
But, I too
must move on,
I, too, must share my wisdom
carved out of
my agonies and ecstasies,
become weathered by it all
not wanting
to live forever.
©Althea Romeo-Mark
“But I Too Must Move On” Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, 1989, Sabanoh Press, Monrovia, Liberia, 1989
Cookbook
I
My mother never used one,
she learned to cook
the way her mother taught her.
Recipes, like folktales, and
the secrets of garden bush,
carrying cures for colds,
high blood pressure, diabetes,
sleeplessness, nightmares,
and measures against restless spirits,
were passed from mouth to mouth.
Mother shared her knowledge,
the only way she knew.
Summoned to the kitchen,
I stood, watched, listened to instructions,
“Come, see how I tun’ de fungi.”
It seemed like hard work,
all that turning with a wooden stick.
Nobody should have to work so hard to make a meal.
I began to sweat before the process even started.
“Bring de water to a boil. Add salt.
Chop the okras, drop dem in de pot.
cook ‘til tender. Sprinkle in de cornmeal. Slowly!”
I stood round the kerosene stove,
shifting from foot to foot.
“See how I tun’ de fungi?”
Heat alternated with breeze
sneaking in through the kitchen door.
“Stir briskly to prevent lumping.”
Mama’s plump, tanned hand churned,
arms swiftly dispensed of sweat
trickling down her nose from forehead,
threatening to become an ingredient.
It seemed forever, the churning,
and watching cornmeal’s
sputtering plop, plop,
spitting and spurting
like nature’s hot water geyser.
Once, my eyes strayed out the window
at Mr. Peters straddling his donkey downhill.
A stinging pinch to my ear
brought me back to the lesson on hand.
“See how I tun’ de fungi.”
See how I add de butter? Stir!
Look ‘pon you.
How you goin’ get a husband?
II
I received a cookbook the day I married.
A wedding present from a friend,
it became my kitchen buddy.
Recipes now committed to memory,
cookbooks sit on a shelf with
old English and American classics
I promise to re-read one day.
My daughters watched my cooking in passing,
made quick observations, did some tasting.
On their bookshelves, a book on Caribbean cooking
serves as a bookend to MLA Guide to Writing
and Modern German Literature.
Recipes today are just a mouse-click away.
I have not forgotten to share secrets
of bushes in back gardens,
measures against restless spirits
and things that must remain unwritten.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, “Cookbook,” The Nakedness of New, 2018.
Hanging Hearts on Clothes Lines
I Wounds
I said I was moving to West Africa.
“Gyal done gone lose she sense,
goin’ to de dark continent,”
spat grandmother at my announcement.
Speechless, stern-faced mother
penned a letter of scalding words,
questions my motive for moving to
“ dat godforsaken place.”
When I put the Atlantic ocean between us,
I didn’t know that doing what I wanted
was launching spears at their hearts.
II True Grit
I get married and bear three children
“in dat godforsaken place.”
After knock-down bouts with malaria,
I am a broomstick, collar-bone sunken.
I relive, thrive in grandmother’s by-gone days—
learn to start a fire, cook and grill on a coal pot,
draw well-water, kneel into the dirt of living.
I rub shoulders with peril—
make my own road through the bush
when it is swallowed by flood,
stare down the barrel of soldiers’ guns,
witness the hunt and capture of a pregnant python,
listen to men talk about the potency of its head,
the richness of its large eggs,
escape the jaws of driver ants and
a trap set by “heart-men.”
I drive pass my neighbor,
mother of a Bassa chief
and a condemned witch.
She pays penance daily for her deeds,
sits in mud on the roadside
and sustains her bags of bones
with boiled peanuts.
The Caribbean lore about men
gouging out hearts to make sacrifices
becomes real and I learn of new ones—
the danger of lightning throwers, and Nigi river-people
who drag victims down into their underwater world.
III Life-lines
Mother’s monthly letters
are smudged with her tears.
she wonders,“Wha’ ah go do if me chile dead?”*
A new letter from mother says
“Granny dead three months ago,
didn’ wan’ burden you wid worry,
throw cocobey ‘pon yaws.”*
I wallow in the thought
she needs to spare me
from the news of lost loved ones.
IV No Time-warp
Anger floods me
when I see mother again.
She is a greying, bent woman.
Who am I angry with? Time?
At seventy-two she abandons me,
leaves me an orphan just when
I am beginning to fit womanhood’s cloak.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, “Hanging Hearts on a Clothesline,” The Nakedness of New, CreateSpace, North Carolina, USA, 2018.
Leaving
She sleeps, deeply.
We watch her chest heave lightly,
like a young babe.
We wonder if she can hear us
when we speak.
Dad says her chin needs shaving.
She would not wish to look
like an unkempt hobo or
a homeless creature
who has lost her way
in this world that hounds the weak.
We speak softly,
wonder if she is listening,
hope we are not saying things
that hurt her feelings.
“Is she going to wake up?”
“Shhh. She might hear us, you know.”
Still hopeful, we slip out
after two hours of holding
and rubbing her hands,
whispering, “See you tomorrow.”
But she departs during the night,
fed up with the hair she cannot trim,
tired of having to lie still,
and hurting with bedsores
she cannot tend to.
Bored also with conversations
she cannot partake in,
and sick of being an object,
people come to stare at.
She is weary of being looked after
When she has cared for others
all her life.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, Revista Triplov, Portugal, 2017
Balloon
She is a full of tears,
waiting for the moment—
a piercing look of knowing pity,
a pricking word of sympathy,
a shared intimate memory,
waiting to burst,
leg go of loss.
Still brimming with the sight
and sound of suffering,
the agony of waiting,
the easing of breathing
the memory of last rasping,
the crossing still unacceptable.
Still jabbing – the touch,
hand cold, hard as marble
at the final viewing.
She is still waiting to break.
What will it take—
a pen to paper,
special song,
favorite hymn,
a photo shared
an apparition,
a secret sèance?
What will it take
to perforate that pain,
empty her soul of sorrow?
© Althea Romeo-Mark, Revista Triplov, Portugal, 2017
Wishing all mothers a blessed Mothers' Day
All that I am
or hope to be,
I owe to my mother.
Abraham Lincoln
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