PAPOOSE  by  Suellen Wedmore 

        --after a painting by Jack Richards

Here, what any mother wants, her child

cacooned from wind and pain,

from the sharp-toothed unknown

prowling forest and field,

her child bathed in wild rose petals,

the quiet of breast-fed sleep,

and in her mother-body

the memory of the light-heavy burden,

little noises like cricket song,

the hummingbird flutter of arms and legs.

This small one now on his blanket

woven from sun on canyon:  Hopi, peaceful,

and still in the mother's sidelong glance

a fear:  remember Lori Ann Piestewa,

her escape from Tuba City

to death in Iraq.  How all that drumming

on an Arizona mountain, the prayers

of the wise ones did not count,

her dreams for a better tomorrow

scattered instead like the red dust

of her homeland.  Hopi woman, Wuut --

all women:  how we yearn for

and fear the child's growing,

a time when we cannot hold him, sing to him,

a time when we can reach him only

with a mother's heart.

       

Suellen Wedmore, Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, has been published in College English, The Litchfield Review, The Ledge and others. Her work has been awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest rhyming poem contests and first place in the Byline Magazine Literary Contest. After 24 years working as a speech and language therapist, she retired to enter the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College and graduated in 2004. She is the mother of three children and has four grandchildren; her son, an army doctor, has been stationed in Iraq three times. Contact Suellen.