Martha Serpas.
“Pearl Snap.”
© Martha Serpas.
Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
Education is the answer
to our social woes, and not
the get-a-good-job-after-high-school,
but the deep plodding kind, the making-
of-many-books kind, get-everybody-
together-to-debate-the-big-questions
kind. When I’m in Walmart
and some kid dangling by the wrist
is screaming, his mom in shorts that
slice her thighs saying something
deep to him through her teeth,
her long hair smelling like she has
more than one job, I know it’s not her fault.
She’s carrying a combination wallet/
cigarette case with a pocket for the lighter.
Her husband — well, the father of her last two,
her divorce isn’t final from her ex —
is waiting in the truck, a Ford. Her dad
had a problem with that until they went
duck hunting and worked it
out. Her man didn’t graduate
even though his junior high let
the boys go when trawling season
began, but each year going back got harder.
She took typing and bookkeeping
and even AP math. She says she manages
a convenience store, where you learn
how to just take on the present.
Right now she just needs
to find that pearl snap for her oldest
and why is it suddenly so dang hard
to find a boy’s twelve pearl snap?
There’re a few like her in every cow town.
When the copter brings a woman’s
child — a certain woman of that kind —
from the parish or the county
to the city, and we all stand around
the trauma bay watching environmental services
sweep up the gauze wrap and cut clothes,
and that woman from the boonies
is still not here, driving her husband’s
truck as hard and steady as she can,
I’ll meet her in family consult
or stand her in the shiny hallway —
she’ll go anywhere — and depending
on what the test tube intern has to say,
she’ll either squat, lay her forearm
against her stomach, and loose
that first wail-groan that defies conceit,
or she’ll tutor me in the language
of living in good faith, of staring
down what I have to say and
opening her mind to it, taking
it in like a nursling and knowing it
whole until the two can sleep side by side.
We tell her, it’s gonna be a long road, and
she says, as long as there’s a road, I’m on it.
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Serpas, Martha. “Pearl Snap.” Martha Serpas Poems. <http:// www.martha serpas. com/ poem_ pearlsnap. html>. © Martha Serpas. Used by permission. All rights reserved.