Q2 p. 20 end of poem – Write and Discuss: Why might the author have juxtaposed the two poems “Uncle Odell” and “Good News”? What theme might be developed?
"Uncle Odell" Poem:
Six months before my big sister is born,
my uncle Odell is hit by a car
while home in South Carolina
on leave from the Navy.
When the phone rang in the Nelsonville house,
maybe my mother was out hanging laundry
on the line or down in the kitchen
speaking softly with her mother-in-law, Grace, missing
her own mama back home.
Maybe the car was packed and ready for the drive
back to Columbus---the place my father
called the Big City---now their home.
But every Saturday morning, they drove
the hour to Nelsonville and stayed
till Sunday night.
Maybe right before the phone rang, tomorrow
was just another day.
But when the news of my uncle's dying
traveled from the place he fell in South Carolina,
to the cold March morning in Ohio,
my mother looked out into a gray day
that would change her forever
Your brother
my mother heard her own mother say
and then there was only a roaring in the air around her
a new pain where once there wasn't pain
a hollowness where only minutes before
she had been whole
"Good News" Poem:
Months before the bone-cold
Buckeye winter settles over Ohio,
the last September light brings
my older sister,
named
Odella Caroline after my uncle Odell
and my aunt Caroline.
In South Carolina, the phone rings.
As my mother's mother moves toward it,
she closes her eyes,
then opens them to look out over her yard.
As she reaches for it,
she watches the way the light slips through
the heavy pine needles, dapples everything
with sweet September light...
Her hand on the phone now, she lifts it
praying silently
for the good news
the sweet chill of autumn
is finally bringing her way.