Jacob's Widow

So in my last blog I promised you something totally different, and here it is. This is a piece I wrote many years ago, inspired by some little thing I saw on TV that grew into a sudden outpouring of this woman's story as if I was possessed by her ghost. God knows I was way too young to relate to her suffering and dreams, yet I felt every nuance of her story as if it was my own. I hope I managed to do her justice. You will be the judge.

 

 

       Jacob’s Widow

                                                                 

 I am yet

    a woman

My breasts mold softly, firmly

          to my chest

My hips flare under this

                   dust drenched dress

And sometimes, late in these

                              deserted nights

I dream

    and awake sighing

  to the curving of my flesh

 

 I am yet

    a woman

  although at times

            I do question this belief

    My hands knead dirt and dough

         with like determination as

      flour and dust mingle

        in stripes of warpaint on my face

 

    My children laugh

                 I laugh with them

  They are my will, my joy, my respite

 

 Jacob.

     What guise of fate met him on the trail

                            to Buffalo’s Gate

    3 years now, a mountain a piece

          I watched him ride away

                 through windhassled sheets of sleet     

 

   He was good

                     Jacob

       Salt of the earth, I whispered

          to the creases of his tanned neck

        when we lay close

                       as my mothers silver spoons

                                      in their velvet bed

 

 

                                     Jacob chuckled then                                                                                      always

   between deepening breaths of sleep

       and pulled my arms tighter

                  around his chest

          his breaths slow and deep

 

 He would have come back

               were he

                      alive

    with or without the bull and heifers

           around which we thought to ply our lives      

                     

        He was a good man

                and I

                     was a good wife

 

 At times I dream

     with my eyes open wide

  I dream of a man

              of his roughhewn hands

 

   Sometimes he wears a face

                 like Jacobs

      blond and broad and tanned

           and I -

                 am his good wife

 

 Sometimes he wears the face of a stranger

   slanted steelgray eyes resting

            in glittering danger

       over curving cheekbones

         in a countenance

                   marked, enhanced

             by the wilderness

       that surrounds us in our naked dance

 

  And I am no longer - Jacob’s good wife

 A dream alone, he is not, this stranger

 

     I saw him once

         spare and rawboned

                     astride his rustic pony

                              rolling a cigarette

          at the edge of a field, freshly sown

                   by which we passed

                           on our way

                                 to the unknown

                          A trembling passed through me                                                                          

       under his peruse

          I felt no longer

             fumbling

                towards

                     womanhood

         with innocence yet to lose

                                                     

I was there

    a womans heart pumped

         Venus blood

       through aching breasts and loins

 

  Then flushed my face with shame

             and internal strife

      for I  was newly

                    Jacob’s good wife

 

 I am yet a woman

   the young girl long outgrown

       as children outgrew

                             my womb

 

  Two now

          in the ground

     two still safe and sound

  they have Jacob’s good heart

              strong body and fair hair

          but in their faces,

     I claim the lion’s share

 

In the boy

      I see my father

   gentled by the innocence

                 of youth

 

   Yet firm as his

           in determination to be a man

                      fight nail and tooth

                             hand over hand

 

The girl-

        she is all mine, as I was

             before this ponderous demise

 

    Dark arching brows

       over almond hazel eyes

     aquiline nose

           fine and freckled by the sun

                smooth skin browned

                          around lips rich as ripe plums

 

                Her smile aches in my bones                                                                                      

       so sheer

                  and unlined

      A robustness there

              no longer reflected

                            in mine

 

 My sweat soaks this earth

           that feeds me

                  at a price

   I am still young

                             am I not?

 

 Jacob’s Widow

     the words stall, sour, in my throat

         startles me, urges me to flee

 

    Such antiquity

              they seem

                    to lay over me     

 

  At night  

      I walk under a stardusted sky

        it lifts above me

              farther and farther

     rising with the exultant cry

                        of my heart

 

  I watch with the wind

                 drawing grim tears

                      stinging my teeth

                            whipping my hair

Banishing the years

 

   I feel life

        well up in me

      like a woman stirring

                     from a deep sleep

             to her lovers touch

 

 I am yet a woman

     I remain unspayed

             by this unforgiving labour

   Alone though I am

         with my children and my soil

      This flesh slowly hardening on my bones

 

         And to Jacob

                this wilderness holds me

                        relentlessly loyal

 

               In the harsh night wind                                                                                         

    I sense the slanteyed  rider

         I tie wishes to tumbleweeds

            with bright ribbons of hope

  That he may find them in his travels

                   and know

                         I am waiting

                                    waiting

 

 For I am yet a woman

   awaiting plucking by hungry hands and mouth

       I hang full and ripe from this twisted vine

                that is my life

 

  And life flows, back and forth, surges

       between myself and this meter of  Time

    But in the whitewashed glare of day

             I feel the scales tip

                   and not

                        in my favour

 

         I watch my fullness shrivel

                 drying in the sun

            my lips pale and cracked

               where they, too, once

                        wore the richness of plums

 

   Such days, I sense with relief the

               falling of the night

        wherein I may reclaim, under it’s cover

                   it’s swelling sky and cruel winds

           that, around which in daylight

                         I dare only hover

 

 In  it’s void

        I am anywhere, anytime, anything

  I am woman

           all softly clinging shapes

                   of half and full moons

               aglow with the tingle of anticipation

                       of a lover expecting a lover soon

 

  I am no more

            Jacob’s good wife

 

 

     There is no Jacob to whom to be good

   I am Jacob’s widow

          and the dry, raspy loneliness

                     of those insipid words

                cover me like a tepid dust

                                                                                                        

from which I awake choking

                my dreams cracked and broken

                    my bones hard and poking

                under toughened skin

 

 I am Jacob’s Widow

           I am a woman yet

      Still, I awake sighing

                  to the curving

                         of my flesh.

 

P.S. A few lines objected to being copy/pasted and just won't quite behave themselves. My apologies!