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Evocation Of Jane Kirby, "Little Grandma"

A curvy girl, with piercing eyes, petite

(not sixty inches tall in stockinged feet,

bereft of shoes and all her other clothes),

you found her willing company on a street

across town---your house far.  No one knows

 

your feeling that you are no more than has been

since Appomattox, nine long years ago,

 and how it yields to pleasure of young sin

in the caresses only she can bestow:

 

caresses  give in a way no other

can imitate, and none can compete

with her refreshing zeal.  Her slow, wet kisses

bring you, by limping spurts, to untold blisses.

 

Michael Adams (father of her daughter,

Lucinda, future still) has not yet sought her.

 

I would like to have met her.  I suppose

that can be achieved only in poetry

for now (and not in cacophonous prose),

a transcendent vision shimmeringly

composed---"Little Grandma," my great-great grandmother.

 

Starward

 

[jlc]

Author's Notes/Comments: 

"Little Grandma," was the name given by my father to his great-grandmother, Jane Kirby, whom be barely remembered from his early childhood (not more than three or four years old, circa 1929-1930).  Jane Kirby's daughter, by Michael Adams, Lucinda was mother to my grandfather, Charles, and grandmother to my father.  In my father's recollection of "Little Grandma," he found her diminutive stature the most remarkable detail about her, and hence his name for her.  The manner by which she earned her living, as an adolescent, was such that her daughter's prospective in-laws attempted to block the marriage of their son to Lucinda.  Despite her inlaws' open or tacit opposition, Lucinda and her husband, my great grandfather David, raised a large family---thirteen children.

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last updated 6 January 2020 - 2:13am
©24 November 2016 - 1:57am — Seryddwr
24 November 2016 - 2:29am — Blackwingedbird
Blackwingedbird's picture

The back-story gives this a

The back-story gives this a real kick. I laugh to think that many avoid knowing the 'seedy' history of which we are all part.

24 November 2016 - 4:03pm — Seryddwr
Seryddwr's picture

Thank you.  The story does

Thank you.  The story does have a kind of cinderella development.  Jane and her daughter came west to this part of Ohio, where, upon settling, she caught the eye of a local man who had built several mills (flour, lumber) on the creeks on the large tracts of land that he acquired.  Apparently, he pursued her for a relationship, and they married, and he raised her daughter Lucinda.  When she met the man who would be her husband and my great-grandfather, his father (a hellfire and brimstone preacher) objected loudly.  They married despite his objections and farmed on land provided by her stepfather.  In her old age, she lived with them, and one of my father's earliest memories is seeing her on their farm, and her very tiny stature.  Some months ago, I read, in a British study of 19th century customs, that call girls (and, admittedly, Jane was one) who were of small stature tended to be more successful, and have more upscale clients, than taller girls.

Seryddwr