Arkansas Diamond, 1949
for Mother
fingers of September sun gently tug / morning moon from its husk / high above Arkansas’s
emerald fields / rooster gives voice / to Paragould dawn / in Gwen’s eighteenth year / she
buttons chambray dress / dons headscarf over blonde tresses / daybreak pinkens cheeks
/ like the agates of St. Francis / as she and her brothers scatter / like seeds between rows
of cotton / laundry on the line flaps against a topaz sky / fair fingertips pluck fluffy spheres
/ drop handfuls milky as quartz / into patched-up sack / strapped over shoulder / thorny
bolls cut her cuticles / leaves turn to garnets / thirteen years she has bent and stooped in
these fields / tangled in briar thicket / covered in cocklebur / residue of toil and blaze / on
her forehead and neck / eyes of jasper clarity turn toward the sunset / her days picking
cotton are done / in 1949 she catches the bus / for Walnut Ridge / six months later she
returns / with a quarter-carat ring and a husband / before leaving for the bluegrass / her
father stands in dirty overalls / watches with eyes of blue phantom / from the worn planks
of his porch / as a stranger walks into a clouded February sun / with a diamond / mined
from his cottonfield
Rebecca Weigold
Rebecca Weigold studied English at Northern Kentucky University. Her poetry appears in many print and online publications and anthologies. One of her poems has been translated into Arabic. She has had multiple Pushcart nominations and a poem chosen as a contest finalist at The Ekphrastic Review.