Mama’s Magic
My mama is magic.
Always was and always will be.
There is one phrase that constantly bubbled
from the lips of her five children,
“My momma can do it.”
We thought my mama knew everything.
Believed she did, as if she were born full grown
from the Encyclopedia of Britannica.
I could tell you stories
of how she transformed
a run down paint peeled shack
into a home.
How she heated us with tin tub baths
from a kettle on the stove.
Poured it over in there like an elixir.
My mama is protection
like those quilts her mother used to make.
She tucked us in with cut out history all around us.
We found we could walk anywhere in this world
and not feel alone.
My mama never whispered the shame of poverty
in our ears.
She taught us to dance to our own shadows.
“Pay no attention to those grand parties
on the other side of the tracks.
Make your own music,” she’d say
as she walked,
she cleaned
the sagging floorboards of that place.
“You’ll get there.”
“You’ll get there.”
Her broom seemed to say with every wisp.
We were my mama’s favorite recipe.
She whipped us up in a big brown bowl
supported by her big brown arms.
We were homemade children.
Stitched together with homemade love.
We didn’t get everything we ever wanted
but we lacked for nothing.
We looked at the stars in my mama’s eyes
They told us we owned the world.
We walked like kings and queens
even on midnight trips to the outhouse.
We were under her spell.
My mama didn’t study at no
Harvard or Yale.
The things she knew
you couldn’t learn in no book!
Like…
How to make your life sing like
sweet potato pie sweetness
out of an open window.
How to make anybody feel at home.
How at just the right moment be silent
and with her eyes say,
“Everything’s gonna be alright, chile,
everything is gonna be alright.”
How she tended to all our sickness.
How she raised our spirits.
How she kept flowers
living on our sagging porch
in the midst of family chaos.
My mama raised children like
it was her business in life.
Put us on her hip and kept moving,
keeping that house Pine-Sol clean.
Yeah, my mama is magic.
Always was and always will be.
Her magic?
How to stay steady and sure
in this fast paced world.
Now when people look at me
with my head held high
my back erect
and look at me with that…
“Who does she think she is?”
I just keep on
walking
with the
assurance inside.
I am Black Magic!
I am Jeanette Redmond’s child.