Kathryn: Who Stayed

by Susan Settlemyre Williams

How people can just decide to live
where the dirt is the wrong color.

Where nobody knows your grandmother
and there are no cousins. My sisters
did it, up and moved to Virginia.

And I live in the house
where my father and grandfathers on back
were born, the gravel road
named for Mother’s people.

The man from Boston told me all
they ate was fish. Who would I be
with folks who eat fish?

                          Who don’t know
Mother’s white corn and country ham or
anything that finally matters.

                        But sometimes I think
about leaving. My life folded up in a single
packing crate. Strange flowers. The sun
coming up through a different window.

Then the drumming starts in my head.
How people can live with the drumming.


Susan Settlemyre Williams is associate literary editor of Blackbird.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Barrow Street, DIAGRAM, and The Cream City Review, among other journals.  Her manuscript Ashes in Midair was a finalist in the 2004 Tupelo Press first book competition.  She grew up in the Carolinas and has lived for 35 years in Richmond, Virginia.  She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and is retired from law practice.