Category: Memories

THE SNOWS OF CHILDHOOD

When the northeast wind drops a snowy

Sail and drapes it over our backyard,

And the halos of angel choristers glow

All over the ebony bowl of heaven,

I pull on my wooley snowpants

And plant my boots in my father’s tracks

To help shovel out our garage.

Above a furry muffler and below

A knitted cap, my cheeks are slapped

Red as my Yorkshire cousins’,  who once

Dug paths to the barn.  With a small spade

I cut cakes as square as ice cubes

And fling them onto ramparts over my head.

My father and I sing Jingle Bells.

BREAKING AWAY

One summer your daughter’s friends

Trucked their hot air balloon

To her annual potluck barbecue

And some of us held the ends

Of the ropes that tethered down

That globe as it filled with air

And struggled up to be gone,

To be off and away somewhere.

I feel you tugging the strings

That bind our hearts to yours.

Our bittersweet memories bring

Less comfort with passing years,

And our own ties that bind

Us to our youthful friends

Are severed one by one

As they too take to the air.

TIME TRAVEL

As I cross the Connecticut line,

I am driving into the past:

Past Norwich, where in the city

Garden across from our house

A half cup, a handful

Of my young husband’s ashes

Are nourishing the roses;

Past the no longer new

Montville city highschool

Where I introduced 

The first juniors and seniors

To Henry the Fifth and Macbeth;

Past the enlarged co-ed

Williams School on the campus

Of Connecticut College where

My classes of fifteen girls

Doubted the justice of

Hester’s scarlet letter;

On to the rendezvous

At a waterfront restaurant

Of Ledyard Center teachers

With whom I once taught reading

And took fall hikes in the Whites;

And here we all reminisce

With laughter and a few tears.

UP AND DOWN PINE HILL

Face down on the Flexible Flyer,

Runners tuning up, a

Conveyer of tire-treaded snow

Trembling into motion,

My watery eyes slitted by wind

Singeing my nose and chin,

At the curve I slid onto unresisting air,

Exhilerated as a sky diver,

And thumped, breathless, onto the virgin drifts

Of a neighbor’s sunken garden.

In spring we wound on roller skates,

Turning butterfly keys until

Clamps tightened on shoe soles,

Tenacious as bulldogs. Then,

Head down and arms swinging, we

Herringboned up the sidewalk

And schussed down, knees bent,

Locomotive wheels clacking,

Hedges blurring past, decelerating

At last to a leisurely standstill.

Summers we stood on bicycle pedals,

Weaving drunkenly uphill.

Fall was leaves whispering underfoot as,

Schoolbags slung over shoulders,

We slogged through fungal fragrance

While peach and violet sunsets

Silhouetted the limbs of lindens.

I still love scrambling and

Panting up precipitous trails

Or jogging on snowshoes down.

GHOST TOWNS IN NORTH WALES

We walk in upland dales past roofless towns.

The wind off glowering crags is

Muffled by slate fence rows: mansized

Slabs ragged from edge to edge,

Planted in soil too thin to bury the dead.

These blue-black panels, weathering grey,

Echo the softly slurring gutterals

Of short and sturdy dark-haired Celts:

Miners who with their wives and children

Walked these paths some forty years ago.

Their boys at twelve did not join boy scout

Troops but took their futile candles

And six-foot iron drill rods

To brave the brimstone depths they’d

Long been warned about by chapel preachers.

Each night they hurried out for a wash

And supper and choir practice, that

Other world that kept them sane and literate

Along with lunchtime meetings where

Roberts’ Rules governed debates.

Empty now are the slate caverns.  Vandalized

Is the manager’s house in the grove.

Open to wind and hail, the miners’ homes

Welcome the chimney swifts while

Waiting for men who never returned from war.

We point binoculars at hardy sheep

Cropping the mountain meadows:

Their lambs are radioactive since Chernoble.

A wagtail showers himself

In acid rainfall blown here from New York.

MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN

The water tastes like death in the Valley of the Fallen:

Franco’s cross casts a long shadow

Between the hills.  How many mothers’ sons

Are stacked like cordwood in that vast basilica

Where roses, those old deodorizers, exhale

Funereal fragrance.  Here the wolf and the lion

Lie down together: brothers in blue and gray.

They choked on mule dust and blew up bridges,

Wearing the delicate stitches of machine gun

Fire.  Here the Olive barons of Seville

Do penance once a year for their Contra,

Their freedom fighter: Franco the Frog, he’s called,

For all the reservoirs he built that could not

Wash the taste of death out of his mouth.

SPANISH INTERLUDE

(For Pauline)

Behind us crystal curtains

Flow over royal fountains.

Madrid’s sunlight is unkind

To our aging skin, but her pixie

Style bridges the years

Since I last saw my earliest

Friend.  We were spanked

For crossing streets and wheeling

Doll carriages around the block.

We whispered forbidden secrets

And played ring-o-leave-o after dark.

Now we have escaped for a week

On a trans-world getaway

From family responsibility.

Palace flags flap.

Sipping diet drinks,

We watch a gardener shaping

Boxwood towers.  Having sought out

Marzipan, porcelain and damascene,

We are free to recall paella

On Fishermen’s Beach, staccato

Heels and castanets, Velasquez’

Golden glow, reflections

Of roses in Moorish pools.

Lacy arches, Don Quizote

Tilting with windmills, olive trees,

Neanderthal caves on Gibralter, and

At El Escorial the odor of mortality.

BON VOYAGE

Three burials in three months:

We socialize over your funeral coffee.

Sisters, you have left the party early,

Set your atom particles swirling

And abandoned your good books,

Flower gardens and canoe trips,

Spinning off children, husbands and pets.

And so I plan the mode of my departure:

Not to be draped in black tapestry

Inscribed with a white six-pointed star,

Or canopied in satin spattered by rainbows

Sifted through stained glass windows,

But taking a long view of the memorial

Service through the wrong end of a telescope.

My bones already oxidized and glowing,

I will pinwheel into Van Gogh’s Starry Night,

Hitching a ride to the nearest galaxy.

The coral shells I leave behind

Will fertilize another crop of beans

Or drift in sun-filtering mists

Onto the fossil seas of the White Mountains.

AN OVERDUE NOTE

(For Helene)

All right, Helene, here is a poem

About our salad days as wives

Of graduate students, housed in adjacent

Twenty-foot trailers next to the

University stadium.  “On Wisconsin”

Energized our weekends.  Saturday mornings

Over cups of coffee, I asked you

What it was like playing clarinet

In Phil Silver’s All Girl Orchestra,

And envied the separate vacations you

And your husband took to visit relatives.

You tried to make me read Karen

Horner, for whom I think you named

A daughter.  You were the first and most

Liberated woman I’ve known.  We’re talking

Now about the forties.  You asked me how

I grew my hard shell.  I counted all

The closed doors in my parents’ house.

When we had children, your four,

My five, your milk and affection

Flowed like sap.  You were not

Strict about toilet training.  You

Were as self-fulfilled as a redwood

Sheltering sprouts.  They tell me when

You died of breast cancer, you made

The parting bearable for all your brood.

You were always ahead of me, Helene.

COMPLIANCE

(for Grandma Lillie)

White and wispy as spun sugar, her hair

Is still damp from the rollers, our arrival

Taking her by surprise.  She sits on her porch

In the only aluminum chair left, her doll

Legs dangling.  Gravity has collapsed her

One inch for each calcium-starved disc.

Now she says she has no neck and cannot

Wear the gemstone pendants we have given her.

She hadn’t thought it would come to this, her porch

Bare of furniture and philodendron,

Her plants twisting heart-shaped leaves for the neighbors.

Her sister says the nursing home is pleasant.

She doesn’t know what to expect.  She’ll take an African

Violet with her and a rocking chair.

She’ll try to bloom where she is planted.  Her voice

Is thin as the top note on a harpsichord.