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Intercessor

We Baptist boys did not need
the Virgin Mary to intercede
for us. We had Memaw,

who could grow a garden, wring
a chicken’s neck or bind up
a careless cut with equal aplomb,

and whose gray eyes never
gave away what was going
on behind them.

She always knew more than
she said, including what we
boys had been up to, even

transgressions that would get
our grandfather’s dander up:
liberating lumber to build

a fort in the woods or
leaving hand tools afield
to be brushed with rust.

When we were found out
and he was doing his best
to be angry, she would look

at him levelly and say,
”They’re just boys, Mac,
they’re just boys.”

.

—
William Blake Brown spent a career as a newspaper writer and editor before turning his hand to poetry and photography. He has observed that while news stories and present facts without truths, poetry can present truths without facts. He lives in Opelika, Alabama.

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