Todd Bailey
Recently, his short story "My Father's House" was chosen as the winner in a national ghost story writing contest and was published in Vicious Spirits – an anthology of ghost stories. His poem "Papaw Picks on Saturday Nights" won First Place in Northeast State's annual literary contest. Currently, he is completing a poetry collection, Walking Before I Crawl.
Garden Hat
by Todd Michael Bailey
Grandma's old straw hat
rides low on her brow.
When hilling potatoes,
sweat rings the brim.
Twine provides a strap.
Sometimes, when a gust
tumbles past tomatoes
and green onions,
a calloused hand
pushes the hat back
to feel deliverance
from summer rays.
The brim shades a spot
two-feet wide over
thick-skinned Half Runners,
caresses long weepy
leaves of corn when she
brushes past, edges tattered
by forty years of okra stalk
shaving flesh and straw.
Ice water renews
her will under hat and sun;
as winds feign,
wrinkled fingers hold
fast to its lip, beating
hot air cool around a weary face.
When crickets serenade,
the hat becomes a bucket
for the day's last peppers.
Today, a "For Sale' sign greets;
the gate swings wide.
In the shed a plow sits idle
while the straw companion
hangs from a nail.
A swig of gas in the tiller,
brim shading my brow,
sweet soil tumbles over tines,
my sweat mixes with hers
under the garden hat.
READ ON:
- Refusal, Jasmyne Rowe
