J. WILLIAM CHAMBERS

A NORTH ALABAMA CHRISTMAS, 1920S STYLE

                                                                                                                                                                                       —for my mother

Red—a color of Christmas,
the color of her life.

A 1920s November,
in days bruised with rain, wind
and the first lacing of ice,
mother earned money enough to buy
her own Christmas warmth
by pulling cotton bolls for a farmer.

Her labors pinned her soul to sadness—
their aftermath, jolts against a childhood fantasy
that could make her cry years later,
recalling her frozen, bleeding hands,
the tug of a sack down rows that seemed
to stretch forever and the shattering of a hope
when her mother used her earnings
to buy a coat for a half-sister.
She began then to bleed
somewhere inside herself.

Red—a color of Christmas,
the color of her death.