Judy Roy. File photo.
by JUDY ROY
A motherless boy in a grown man’s body,
Bill never misses a community meal.
Server, dishwasher, eager team player,
he sparks the kitchen crew. Last week a guest stopped
to thank the cooks, spotted Billy, gave him a hug.
He wrapped her in his powerful arms,
swaying back and forth, back and forth,
as long ago his mother must have rocked him,
as he might have embraced the child he would not have.
Strong woman is what they say about Helen,
and she would need to be so in order to tend
her gargantuan garden and bring its tomatoes,
squash, kale, and rutabagas
along with pastries and sauerkraut
to the summer markets. All this while running
her one-woman auto repair shop and restoring
the family homestead for tourists.
It’s how she gets by.
Bess and Len own the prettiest farm between
Baileys Harbor and Fish Creek. Manicured lawn,
flowers blossoming all summer long, neatly plowed
fields stretching out in back. But last winter’s lethal cold
killed the fruit trees; it’s just their skeletons
there now, branches outstretched as if
they were calling back the green leaves. When
the propane ran out they lost the greenhouse plants
and had to keep themselves warm and the pipes from freezing
with just two small electric heaters. But this spring
they made their maple syrup just as they have
for nearly seventy years. Good stuff,
sweet as summer. Sweet as hope.
A Milwaukee native, poet Judy Roy moved to Baileys Harbor after retiring from her job teaching French and psychology in Marshfield. She wrote her first poem in elementary school and never stopped. Roy’s poetry has been featured in publications including Wisconsin People and Ideas, Museletters and the Peninsula Pulse. Locally, she has read her poems at Midsummer’s Music performances and the Dickinson Poetry Series.Roy’s poem “We the People” was published in Soundings: Door County in Poetry, a Door County Poetry Collective project. The book is available through the Door County Library and at Write On, Door County.
