Autobiography in Yellow Flowers

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN YELLOW FLOWERS by Joanna Saylor The mountains of Kentucky. . . In a yard a child stands among the marigolds Listening Summer winds among the trees carry the voice of a lonesome singer A song of guilt and regret, of loneliness and sorrow. The child shivers, shrinks down among the pungent flowers And forever after Guilt and regret, loneliness and sorrow, beauty and summer winds are intermingled with the odor of marigolds. Harlan County. . . A summer afternoon On the porch of a house in a mining-camp the child sits, on her lap a baby brother, warm and small. Listening A neighbor talks with her mother "Reckon I'm losin' my mind over Mommy. . . . Murph says now we're married we ought to forget and . 13 But I caint forget that I slipped out to Murph and left her alone at night Sick and alone and came back and found her dead." Young, slim, tormented, she paces about the porch, then down the steps and buries her face among the marigolds. Springtime. . . Yellow spring flowers grow in moist green grass. A girl and her sisters pick flowers to take to church. Listening Her father says to her mother "Look at the girls! They're growin' up! I wonder if they understood what I read to them this mornin'? '"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?'" We cut the green leaves from golden dandelions and chop them with onions in bacon grease A big raucous family celebrating springtime. Another summer day. . . My mother in an orange cotton dress waters her flowers with water from a well beneath a cedar tree. I, a tall teenager among the sunflowers, Listening A blue-eyed neighbor boy says to my mother "Is it all right with you, then, if I run her down and kiss her?" My mother smiles. "She'll outrun ye, Johnny." I elude him, climb a tree, and hide among the leaves. Hollywood, California. . . Another time, another world I look into the dark sophisticated eyes of a man. "No?" he says. "No furs, no jewels? How do I court you then?" "Let me share your emotions, thoughts, experiences, 14 and send me yellow roses." "Ah, this fleeting world!" chanted the Anglo-Saxon poet in the olden time. On the graves of my parents No blossoms, please. If the measure of a human life is love which it has given, then their lives were rich, full-blown. On their graves put yellow flowers. Sometimes on quiet summer days Listening I hear the lonely voice of Time calling through this fleeting world I water the miniature marigolds on my window-sill and wonder On my grave which will it be Yellow blossoms or yellow flowers? Joanna Saylor lives now and teaches in the Chicago area. 15 ...