Sparkling Shana

 

Sparkling Shana

Shana learns young to raise herself.
To smile for survival.
Mom sings in LA nightclubs,
loves cats and gin and lunatic theories, also men
who stink of tobacco but pay the rent.
They don’t treat Shana kindly.

Mom has a plan to save the world
though she can’t explain except to Ronald Reagan
so Mom rides a bus from LA to the White House,
a call from the DC jail: You be good, Shana.
I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Shana rides in Grandad’s pickup across deserts
to Texas where she finds kindness and horses
until a pinto tosses her onto her spine.
Then Grandad’s new woman hisses He’s mine.

Shana hitches to Frisco where she’s a bent flower
in bright clothing. With Texan good sense by day
she works as a secretary to a garbage company,
insurance benefit. Nights, it’s like a costume party.

Weekends, no costume at the beach
with killer weed and wearing a smile when
she meets a man on horseback who clicks. Like love.
He’s lacking in kindness but Shana follows for a year
until the drugs go crazy — his for fun, hers for pain.
He gets prison, big time. She gets
probation and a baby girl.

Two years on welfare, an insult but keeping clean
and with the innate wisdom of a survivor
she marries her chiropractor. Not love, not exactly,
not at first. No click. But it’s kindness.

Later, love.
Now she manages the office. Her back
has never felt better. In school the little girl blossoms,
grows tall, so smart. See Shana smile.

More often than we might think,
the grinding of the earth creates a diamond.
Lovely. Hard. Sometimes flawed.
And she sparkles.

……

From my book Random Saints
First published in MOON Magazine—thank you editor Leslee Goodman

thistles with thorns
make lovely flowers