My mother, Jean Williams, is a playwright, a writer, and a poet.  These are two of her poems.



Highway 57


Chicago's left behind, anchored to the lake
And now we speed along this arrow highway
Which cuts into the heart of Illinois.
On either side the fields stretch level, black and brown
The barns are painted uniformly red or white
But empty corn cribs stand forlorn in tidy fields.
No need for them when stately silos straddle in the earth.
The fields seem barren but that is all illusion.
The plough has turned the earth
And here and there
A foolish farmer harvests in the howling wind
And sends his land to settle in the West.
How many acres does it take to build a fighter plane?
Not a big one, mind. How many? That many!
How many acres does it take to feed a starving child.
Not a big one, mind. How many? Not many!
Soon rugged corn will grow,
A crop to gladden any farmer's heart.
Nourishment is suctioned from the earth
To make each stalk a darker green.
Soybeans are planted later
And grow more out than up.
The earth force-fed with nitrogen
So that in another summer, yet to come,
The corn can grow again.
So nature does repeat itself and
gives rewards to those who tread with care.
How different this from desert sand
Where armor seems to grow and
lethal mines perform their valedictory blast to quarter the unwary.
How many mothers watch their children hop from place to place
And rue the day that armies came to squat inside their land?
How many acres does it take to build a fighter plane?
Not a big one, mind. How many? That many!
How many acres does it take to feed a starving child?
Not a big one, mind. How many? Not many.





Gardens



Graveyards, the gardens of America, grow plastic flowers once a year.
A bird might drop a seed and, God forbid, a daisy grows, but not for long;
a mower cuts it down to size,
 no child will ever make a daisy chain and laugh to wear it on her head.
These gardens of America speak to me.
They tell of deaths of long ago, of many, many children laid to rest
And parents left to grieve and then to bear some more to fill another grave.
A green, green grave holds my mother
And there I wish to be when once I die.
My children, born and raised in this vast, alien land
What of them?
This is their home but never mine.
My mind still wanders in the graveyards of the past,
and here I stand and read my husband's stone,
who lies in cold, cold ground,
he, who always loved the warmth.