Jane Jenkins was just barely ten
When her father's beatings had begun
The year was nineteen twenty nine
As they waited together in the free bread line

Her little face wore such sweet repose
Her cheeks the color of the old fashioned rose
That grew on the trellis, by the house on the hill
Where the voice of her mother was stoic and still

He always wore a Black Irish frown
Since the day he arrived from Dublin Town
With the immigrant groups who then there came
To dodge its poverty and shame

It had never really been that bad
Before that Tuesday that the stock market crashed
He drove a truck, a Mack I think
But had propensity to drink

And sometimes days would turn to weeks
He'd not come home and they lived on the cheap
And all those times that he was stealth
He kept his paycheck to himself

So itty bitty tiny Jane
With her mother would beg to gain
A penny here or a nickel there
Picking cotton until their hands were rare

So she'd grown accustomed to those times
Her stomach was emptier than yours or mine
But the one thing that was sorely marred
Was her wee small heart with its thickened scars

And she safeguarded it under lock and key
Putting on a face of merry glee
And attended school wearing flower sacks
In place of the fabric that her mother lacked

And then one day her life all changed
She dared to dream a dream to frame
He'd left for good with his Black Irish frown
She stomped his memory in the cold hard ground

Sara Fielder © Feb 2012