At 45 her ailing mother grew with child A babe the last hope that the village doctor could prescribe The baby was born as the old woman heaved And slipped from the shtetl right into the grave Younger than her nieces and in her sisters house Brothers boxed her ears And ignored her hungry mouth At thirteen in a New York tenement The neighbors heard her screams rattle the cement A delirious child in a hospital room As The doctors sealed up her immigrant womb Mini set out to Toronto by train rejected at the border but she would not be detained She tore up her ticket and tied up her boots And continued in the snow putting foot in front of foot Facing earths meanest jaws before she reached 18 Mini took a chance and worked a leather machine Mini, free from fancy, with her toughened hands, Stitched jeweled clasps and Knotted tapered strands Mini made her fortune and bought the factory Married a man for love never had a family When mini joined her mother, she'd died a millionaire And a distant nephew wrote to the unsuspecting heirs Comments (5)