Personal Poetry, poetry

Meet Me At Buck Hollow

     A day so hot …

chickens roasted as they walked.

Something  to swim in,

iced cold tea,

was all we needed

as we plunged in the

Jack’s Fork River;

to swim in the sun

where

Rockwell’s held on.

All   rights Reserved copyright   by Yvonne  Leehelen Dowell

 

 

Jack’s Fork River is just a few miles from Mountain View Missouri where my children went quite a bit as children. It was a regular swimming hole for the kids in the Ozark hills all summer long.

My Sixty-Eighth Year

Mamas Cinnamon Rolls

In the late 1950’s mama made millions upon millions of cinnamon rolls. She didn’t have a bakery, just an apron, flour, sugar , oleo margarine,water and herself. I know she was constantly wore out.  Five kids  still at home and an invalid husband she was always tired.

She had already raised the other eight kids and now her life was still hardship and pain. She was a woman who didn’t complain. She made cinnamon rolls to please us when she got the money to buy the sugar, or cinnamon. When the grown children brought the grandchildren over she got out her antique green bowl and began making those cinnamon rolls. No wonder she was so skinny back then.

Mama didn’t have much money but she had hands that could knead bread and make delicious cinnamon rolls when she could afford to buy the ingredients. Those hands held love in them.

My Sixty-Eighth Year

Seeing Eyes

I resent these eyes

that don’t see  like they used to.

I am grateful they work  some.

God I am thankful for these two eyes,

have big spots in front of them.

Thank you.

Sometimes these eyes are better

than nothing.

 

 

My Sixty-Eighth Year

Crepapery

Lately television has been having these programs about old people just like me. Give me a break, please. I have this 68-year-old skin and I will not pay $50.oo for skin cream that promises to give me baby skin. I like my crinkly skin. It has its own special quality of oldness with brown spots to it. Matter of fact I  might make my own special stuff for keeping old age skin beautiful and old.  I could call it,” natural wonder.” I would put a bar of soap in a jar. I am serious. The price would go up to $50.00  a jar of course. After all  this is a new product and a natural wonder.

My Sixty-Eighth Year

Death

I first experienced death in the fall of  1958 when I was ten years old. It had been  hovering around our apartment for several years. Daddy had a stoke so I knew he could die. I couldn’t comprehend exactly what death meant. I don’t remember anyone explaining anything to me. I just knew he went to Heaven. I suppose going to Sunday School every Sunday had a story way back that taught the concept.

If you want to know the truth, I thought he was coming back. I grieved hard for my daddy. I lost him several years before. He had pre-senile dementia and wasn’t the same daddy I had when I was younger. I still didn’t want him to leave. I don’t know if we  are ever ready for a parent to die.  I am not sure what age is easier; at ten or sixty-five.

Not long before he passed   he said,”EulaMae, get me a glass of water.”

I laughed and said,”Daddy, I’m not Eula Mae.”

He said, “If  you’re not EulaMae,  who are you?”

“I am Yvonne,”I said.

I’ll never forget how daddy cried and cried when I explained that EulaMae  was his oldest daughter and I the thirteenth child of fourteen. He kept crying.

“Myrtle, where was I all those years?” He cried.

“Where was I?”

I sat down on the couch and cried with daddy.

That was fifty-eight years ago. It still hurts.