After listening to the Missionary speakers at Refuge Baptist Church in Red Hill, Alabama; I was so enthralled with their stories of the people of Africa and the hardships they endured daily, I was consumed with the desire to help when I became an adult.
Coming home on those inspired Sundays I would tell my mother of the exciting things I learned about Africa and my plan to become a Missionary. Knowing my aspirations to be a writer, she encouraged me to go and write a book about my life there, she would be so proud. I was twelve years old.
As children will do, I assured my mother I would write a book about my life in Africa. That promise, having been made before the journey even started, has gone unfulfilled until now. These poems have become my Africa and the lessons I would have tried to teach had I gone so long ago. I am praying this book of poetry will be the bridge to my dreams of writing her that promised book.
I did not become a Missionary, never been out of the states, and only short, telling pieces of my life have ended up on paper as prose or poetry. These are not stories of Africa or anywhere far away, but right here, day to day life, personal, and yet universal in so many ways.
Wanda Scribner Thibodeaux was born in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1944. She currently resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Being the seventh of twelve children she has always loved writing about her siblings, gathering their escapades lovingly into poetic form, capturing memories on paper that could have been lost forever.
Married to a charming and delightful Cajun for forty-two years, the best part of her life was at his side. Carey Joseph Thibodeaux passed away July 3rd, 2008. The Thibodeaux's have five children and fourteen grandchildren.
She is now retired and plans to write full time. Her greatest interest at present is writing the inspiring story of her mother's life, a journey of love and laughter, mingled with tragedy and only on occasion a hint of triumph.
Wanda has never pursued publication for her poetry but has published in The Baton Rouge Advocate's, Human Condition, The Tallassee Tribune, and The Elmore County, Alabama, Book of Heritage, 2002.
Of Organdy, Sunflowers, and Guitar Strings is a collection of Southern prose and poems. The title poem is a self portrait. Others are random thoughts on life, love and laughter. Some just had to be written. Those are my favorites.
Of Organdy, Sunflowers, and Guitar Strings
I loved the organdy of youth,
spring's fabric;
rhythmic whir of the Singer,
needle's palpitating beat,
how she slip-stitched the hem
with the same sentient fingers
that stroked guitar strings;
calling me her sunflower,
the dress,
an exuberance of yellow
slipped over bowed head.
Satin sashed,
I rose
like an Easter Sunrise.
Summer-
that green interlude,
hills of painted buckeye,
cotton fields,
bare legs and sling-backs.
How we harmonized Danny Boy
and she sang tenor,
night drifting around us
in a gown of black silk,
we were rich with harmony.
How it is the season for love,
he loved me, he loved me not,
only the four-leaf clover knew.
How I wrapped my babies cater-
cornered, calling them my sunflowers,
dreams resonated
through curls of tiny fingers
circling mine.
Now wrapped in the wool of Winter,
Fall, long splendored away,
reminders linger.
The taste of sugar-coated blackberries,
my mother's guitar strings,
a phone call, this morning, my son,
"I'm in the mountains today,
near Shatley Springs,
remembered how you loved this place,
and ma, I found this wild lily…
it's not a sunflower."
Each season's tender benediction
has brought me to an interim
where patterns of my life come
together, words of the most Holy
Seamster gives me peace,
and I find contentment in my dreams
of organdy, sunflowers, and guitar
strings.
I