Mystic Mam-A-Jama

Books by Dorothy Rice

Pennies to Dollars / The Seventeenth Child

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Mystic Mam-A-Jama—a Poem

By Dorothy Marie Rice

eventually i will write a poem
which will be spoken from everyone's lips
as easily as licking a cherry-flavored lollipop

eventually i will write a poem that rumbles
like a freight train across a busy intersection at noon
my poem will bundle the weary soul
like a squirrel's nest in the bough of a maple tree

my humble musing will be ambitious like a creek meandering
into the james river, soaking sediment in the chesapeake bay
surging into the atlantic ocean and
vibrating in the creamy smooth chambers of a conch shell

birds and beasts, and critters that creep
will synchronize their timepieces for the great presentation of my poem
but until . . .

my poem will be the mystic mam-a-jama

metaphor that beckons wayward lovers home
and makes prodigal children prepare feasts
for their own parents . . .

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Ó 2005 Dorothy Marie Rice / January 14, 2005

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Dorothy Marie Rice is a literature and history resource teacher at the Arts and Humanities Center in Richmond, Virginia. She presents her original poetry in local venues. She was a winner of the first Furious Flower Poetry Prize in 1995. She has co-authored two books: Pennies to Dollars with her cousin Muriel Miller Branch, and The Seventeenth Child with her mother Lucille Mabel Walthall Payne. Both books are currently out of print. In addition to creating poems, she makes paper jewelry and papier-mâché bowls.

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updated 3 April 2008