Contributor Series 7: The Confessional Diary of Bone
Sarah’s Eyes
By Dee Thompson
I have come to understand that memory is biological.
When I look at the photos of my Cherokee great great grandmother Sarah,
her tiny skull,
her sad eyes,
I feel her despair. I have no words
for her story, only legends and suppositions, but her eyes–
Over a century, her eyes told the truth.
My bones hold her stories, secrets.
She went deep into the mountains where they couldn’t find her
and stayed off the tearstained trail.
She married a white man,
took a white name, and bore him sons.
Her grandson/my grandfather–Papa–he wore long limbs
from his father, a giant, angry man.
Was it the taint of mixed blood that caused Papa’s father
to tie the hands of his sons and beat them bloody?
Papa stopped the carnage
as soon as he was big enough to fight his father.
Or was it anger at Sarah
for turning away from her Cherokee family?
Papa turned away from that rage
and became a gentle giant,
a great warrior on the baseball field.
As an elder, he fed me bits of bread and honey
and read me stories.
Like Sarah,
he loved the sanctuary of mountains.
I lost Papa when I was nine years old.
I feel Papa in my bones though,
in the beat of the drums when I go to pow-wows.
I feel her inside me too, in those drums;
mute memories pulse in a newer heart, but
I always want to weep for what we lost.
Dee’s poem Weathering was published as part of Contributor Series 3: Resolution and Resolve in December 2009.
