Three Poems
Photo Courtesy | Leslie Yeary
BY LESLIE YEARY
Nana
Nana drank tea on wraparound
porches with Mrs. Rosemary Clooney
and other Maysville queens.
I steep my own bag of rosemary,
lemon sage, and honey in a pink mug
coarse to the touch with glitter.
I dance the little bag of herbs around
the stainless steel interior for a moment and
I notice my aloneness. I am standing
in my Ohio kitchen while two tiny
gentlemen learn numbers from BBC cartoons;
their bodies sprawled on crumbly carpet.
My back has been aching, and my inability
to straighten reminds me of Nana. I can hardly
recall her without a hunchback, however
I am told she was seven inches taller than
her stooped 5’5” of when I knew her. I knew
tobacco hung to dry from Papa’s barn,
and wildflowers were margins along
the winding drive. My dad’s horse was a Star
by name and mark, and Nana surely
must have been the actual sun in which
this hidden sliver of My Old Kentucky Home
revolved: red-brick farmhouse, chimney
lifting rings of warmth up from a green-shag
living-room rug, and Nana’s Oaks who had the singular job of shading five granddaughters who never found
reason to quit running through the summer
sprinkler. Nana sat sipping tea. Nana, always a Queen.
She wore her white hair coiffed like a crown
reminding us of her humble kitchen throne.
Lemon Meringue Pie, Nana’s love language and
Fried Chicken always tasted of pastry flakes.
We drank Sweet Iced Tea even on Christmas
and our presents were wrapped and tied with a bow
by the ladies at JCPenny. You should have seen
the eight foot pine where gifts spilled
like needles over a forested floor. Share. The girls
can share. My daddy would speak
through politely gritted teeth
and throw the gifts against the brick. Nana
always won. Nana was a boy mom
like me. Five granddaughters, finally,
gave her that particular joy akin to the joy
my boys feel every time the first snow
waits until February. I couldn’t conceive
of having a girl. Nana once was, as I am now, six feet.
A daughter, our height . . . I would have loved her.
I reach my arms to the back of my taut neck.
Feel my curvature gradually steepen like the hills
that drove us home from school. I recall
the paper wads tossed to the tune of skyscraper, skyscraper! Nana never once sat down. Her tall figure
rounded over sink and stove, wrapping fingers
around glasses from the top shelf and I, too, reach
for a sippy, no tiptoes needed. No extra stool needed,
I straighten my back and I am my own island.
Not a porch wrapping mothers like queens,
no, I am no Nana. No madly famous friends, only
a handful of other mothers who stand
reaching, stretching below me and I quietly
offer my extra height, when needed. Nana never
called about her falls. She landed, thud, alone.
Daddy
got an inkling.
And Nana wore earrings
to captivate me.
These Two Trees
Two shade trees stand side by side.
Branches crisscrossing as if holding hands
to brave the westerly winds
that tend to crash on our field—
the highest point of these seven hills?
I question my encyclopedia
of a neighbor who assures me
our storm damage is always worst.
And so I plot like a mad scientist how
to anchor these two brothers, these two
trees, to gentleness: take notice
of your roots, and please, hold hands
while crossing streets.
Boy Mom
Upon swallowing whole
their second bite of supper,
my two young sons escape
to the open space between
deck and tree line and fly.
And before I can say
ready or not here I come!
they have moved on to jumping
in a forgotten pile of leaves
and take to it like a couple of giddy puppies
who crash . . . emerge . . . and zoom back
for more, except! my boys stop
after one turn. The wet ground underneath
is beckoning them to wrestle,
and so they do. Now grass-stained
and coated with flakes of oregano,
my occasionally gentle men barrel through the screen
door—already torn clear from its black
snake of a frame—as they turn my kitchen
back into a pig’s sty, a barn, a boy-mom’s mud room.
And like all good mothers do, I lose it
(a little bit) and yell, argh! stay outside!
Yet I cave to their plea and step
beyond the threshold. I’ll sit, you play.
Yet. I offer my two long legs
to my two growing boys, and we pause
for a moment. A hug. A cuddle.
A shared present better than Christmas
and I am learning to not mind the dirt,
learning to treasure even the dirt.
LESLIE YEARY is a writer, boy mom, and preschool teacher from Cincinnati, Ohio. A lover of the great outdoors, she draws inspiration from the many adventures she has with her two young sons. In her poetry and prose, Leslie explores the joy that can be found in simple mothering and in taking life gently one day at a time. Leslie is published in Motherscope’s Issue 4: Generations, The Mum Poem Press Anthology, Songs of Love and Strength, and she has self-published her first collaborative poetry collection Dear Sister.