Jane Jenkins was just barely ten <br />When her father's beatings had begun <br />The year was nineteen twenty nine <br />As they waited together in the free bread line <br />Her little face wore such sweet repose <br />Her cheeks the color <br />Of the old fashioned rose <br />That grew on the trellis by the house on the hill <br />Where the voice of her mother <br />Was stoic and still <br />He always wore a Black Irish frown <br />Since the day he arrived from Dublin Town <br />With the immigrant groups who then here came <br />To dodge its poverty and shame <br />It had never really been that bad <br />Before that Tuesday that the stock market crashed <br />He drove a truck, a Mack I think <br />But had propensity to drink <br />And sometimes days would turn to weeks <br />He'd not come home and they lived on the cheap <br />And all those times that he was stealth <br />He kept his paycheck to himself <br />So itty bitty tiny Jane <br />With her mother would beg to gain <br />A penny here or a nickel there <br />Picking cotton until their hands were rare <br />So she'd grown accustomed to those times <br />Her stomach was emptier than yours or mine <br />But the one thing that was sorely marred <br />Was her wee small heart with its thickened scars <br />And she safeguarded it under lock and key <br />Putting on a face of merry glee <br />And attended school wearing flower sacks <br />In place of the fabric that her mother lacked <br />And then one day her life all changed <br />She dared to dream a dream to frame <br />He'd left for good with his Black Irish frown <br />She stomped his memory <br />In the cold hard ground <br /> <br />Written by Sara Fielder © Feb 2012<br /><br />Sara Fielder<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jane-jenkins/
