Woman Pausing on the Side of the Road to Tie Her Shoe, and: How Sparrows Learn to Spell A-R-I-T-H-M-E-T-I-C, and: Will They Bar Me at the Gate?, and: Wrapped in Quilts, Brought Around the Horn, Carried by Wagon to Beyond Boise, and: That Springtime of Her Life

Woman Pausing on the Side of the Road To Tie Her Shoe

Frances Stanton, Cottonwood Idaho, 1889

It is written: where your treasure is,
your heart be also, but
a broken shoelace shouldn't make me weep.
Easier to gather grapes from buckthorn
figs from purple thistle flower than
dispel this inner darkness.
What is it they tell children
while thrashing hazelnut switches
in front of cracked faces: stop blubbering
before I give you something to cry about?
Where's the treasure amid a landscape
as featureless as oatmeal,
endless oven-hot winds and ice pick rocks?
Dust in my shoes, behind my collar. And beneath me,
razoring through a dry river of brown
bent grass like the hair of the dead, a snake.
What was it mother used to say ... cried because
I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.
And when you lose the secret shelf your soul sits on,
where's the silver lining then? What's worse than this
drum rolling electrical storm of the self?
The sting of November's never-ceasing rain,
a phlegm-gray sky for months on end?
When did I first look up into the firmament,
seeing holes where stars had been?
How desperate I've become:
My shoestring has broken, the frayed end
undone again and I've no other laces.
My boot flops like a palsied head -
a lolling tongue letting grit steal in, my heel a bed
of pearl blisters. What cleanses the spirit
when Jordan turns brackish?
My neck too weak to hold up my chin.
Bonnet so heavy, I remove
the brim slats, let the bill droop
across my face, a veil shielding my eyes:
I imagine that small snake's
dark serpentine the shade-cooled
milk and honeyed Hallelujah shore of my youth.

Stand up, Mrs. Stanton. Stand and tie your shoe.
You ask for bread, here is a stone;
you ask for fish, here is a serpent. But
many rocks piled will build you a house;
even ravenous wolves fear the tiniest snake.
Where your treasure is, your heart be also.

How Sparrows Learn to Spell A-R-I-T-H-M-E-T-I-C

Frances Stanton, Cottonwood School House, Idaho 1889

Nameless, they appeared without warning,
a family of four children, the older
having waited until the youngest
legal school age to attend.
Living miles from town, they'd never
heard English. Their tongue,
was it Czech? The town Blacksmith, a Slav,
said it sounded Norwegian.
The mother lived out, doing miners' mending,
no one ever heard tell of their father.
If called upon, I'd swear
they'd brought up themselves. Their language
the chirping of birds. Thus, for their sparrow-
like trills I named them.

The other scholars jeered at their chatter:
Chee-chee: please, please,
a dipper of water;
cheep-cheep: may I sit
a hare's breath closer to the fire.
Having fashioned their own lexicon,
they understood one another. Eventually
I could school them, but only after learning
some of their jargon: book, book,
slate, slate. Their classmates helped:
miming letters, concocting spelling games.

At noon, the sparrows ate
from dinner pails filled with the bread
of worry and water of affliction.
One by one, other scholars shared -
a pat of lard, a heel of rye, a turkey quill pen.

Nights, I kept all four after class.
One thought "Punishment"
both his given and surname.
The youngest so bashful,
when forbidden to peep,
uttered not a whisper.
Worse, another stuttered.
Greasing her speech
tried my soul and my patience.

It is said: when a lamp shines in darkness,
darkness does not understand. But
as if making...