Her Name Was Mary

My grandparents spent long hours operating their small-town grocery. Mary helped by preparing meals. As kids, we would race to the kitchen to visit with her. A big woman with a big smile, she would be standing there in her ruffled apron. When asked how a dish was prepared, her polite response would be to use a pinch of this and a little of that – never measuring. Mary was black, my family white. I grew up during the 1960s, but never understood what segregation meant until schools desegregated. Mary has been gone many years, yet when I am in the kitchen preparing something new, I think to myself, “What would Mary do?”

        standing
        with you beside me . . .
        shadows

— Dan Hardison

First photo of Mary by Sammy Hardison, second photo of Mary, Sammy Hardison and Clare Hardison by unknown. Columbia, Tennessee


"Her Name Was Mary" was included in the call for poetry based on the Cameron Art Museum's two exibitions Willie Cole’s Black Art Matters and The Face of Lincoln, February 2021.

The haibun originally appeared in the journal Haibun Today, March 2014, Vol 8, No 1.