A day that starts with a lesson from the Professor is a great day indeed! Bob Christin recently gave us Inner Lives, part of Contributor Series 5: Dramatis Personae. Here he gives us a different story, but his voice is always his own, identifiable to us no matter the story.
Goodness
By Bob Christin
She’s all the way over there to the poorhouse
Where they feed you and find you something to wear.
Each week she brought Mom and me
butter and honey, and a tiny biscuit or two,
a biscuit for Mom and me, sometimes only
one for me.
She dressed real funny, long black skirts,
black stockings and shoes that were no longer
shoes, one knotted lace in each.
We missed her. We missed buying from her
our butter and honey, but we missed most of all
the goodness she brought with her, a goodness
we used to breathe in and feel, the kind of goodness
that comes from working hard to eke out a living
barely making it, no more.
Mom made some biscuits and we took her some with honey. People who sat on the porch
of the poorhouse did not look at us or speak. When
our butter lady came to the door she was not pleased
She took the biscuits and honey to the kitchen and never returned.
On the way home we both teared up to see how far
down our butter lady had come.
We went a long way into town to buy butter and honey
now, but you can’t buy goodness.
We often felt her goodness around us. We could no
longer breathe it but we could feel it. She’s a long way over
there in the poorhouse
where they feed you and find you
something to wear.
So sad.
I can hear my friend’s voice in this poingant verse. We shall all miss Bob.