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Show MY MOTIDSR'S IIAND By ANN WOODBURY HAFEN Today I looked on 'a map of the West my mother's hand. Flesh geography of the old frontier was there In the strong blue veins that ridged the furrowed skin. In the eddied knuckles, weathered nails, and gullied palm I saw how the West shaped a woman's hand As that hand shaped the West. A picture map deep-etched this hand the worked a hoe. That scythed alfalfa bribes for evening milk, That carried adobes for the long-dreamed house, That scrubbed out irrigation's mud and sweat. This steady hand that pressed the danger trigger Delivered new-born, needled shrouds, and washed the dead. Through eighty beauty-hungry years, Through four generations of weddings The small hand moved A self-willed dynamo that generated Sixty stitches to a minute, Twenty pieces to a quilt-block pattern. Forty blocks to a quilt of rainbow wedding rings To warm the matings. In an Old World garden this hand, velvet white, Secreted seeds in a young bride's -deepest pocket, Guarded them from hunger's blind devouring Through six-thousand alien miles And fed them at last to the black volcanic ash Of the Rocky Mountains. Out of woman's bended labor, Watered by a widow's tearful prayers, Stirred by "courage of a mother's hand The sleeping land awoke to food and flowers. Flesh geography of the West I touched today. In the seamed erosions of a weathered palm I saw a nation's story carved in glory. Dynamic map of life my mother's hand. |