Memory

"Ships are launching from my chest; some have names but most do not. If you find one, please let me know what piece I've lost."                                          
                                                                      -- Radical Face

I am coming home

a place of in between

tell me I belong

in the picture fixed

to the gummy stripes

of a picture album page

there in shadow of a place

layered in leaves and creeks

and the cuffs of rolled up

blue jeans tell me that

I am the girl who clung

to the rails of a rusting

fence barbs dulled red and

easily pulled away to escape

tell me again that I have not

been gone too long that I still

cast a silhouette on the floor

from the sun streaming through

my grandmother’s hands

I cannot be separated from my

people I grow like a pansy in

early summer my blooms drain

purple into white petals I am

overgrown reaching for the  

sun vining like twisted green

arms wrapping around

the apparition of memory

tell me tell me again

that I am home in the

clefts of living and have lived

that I still dwell there a small

child under the old tree

reading and watching the sky

a cloud passed and reminded me

I am coming home

The Old House on Memorial Day

There are things you notice with age -
The splintering of wood porch columns,
Cracks through plaster and paint,
Bubbled, licked with the flames
Of winter. There are things that
Turn your heart around; Grandma's
Coffee cup abandoned in the cupboard, and
The feeling of cross stitch sentiments
Long absent from slanting walls.
There are things that hold your
Attention, the old fashioned
Electrical sockets with thick
Wires exposed like brittle veins,
And the closet doors  made too
Small and too cockeyed. You notice,
Too, the foundation, with deep
Furrows, leading to the black underbelly
Of the house, and the chimney with
Old red mortared bricks, sagging at
Points but not breaking. You notice these
Things you didn't notice as a child, when your
Grandmother was living and gentle, and
Your grandfather still snuck bites of pie
From now long empty countertops.
You see these things, inanimate
Elements of a structure so many called
Home. Remnants of family, ground into
The wallpaper and discarded curtains,
Into the dinner table existing there still, that
Held more than its fair share of supper, happiness,
Grief, and fresh yeast rolls. And at that table,
I see my grandmother, like a picture left on a
Mantle, hands folded in front of her,  along with
A plate of food barely eaten, and a cup of luke
Warm coffee. We always clung to her and to
The table, when there was no eating left to do.
We always cleaved to the edges of the wood,
Drawing a fork through the bits of memory left
On our plates.

There are things that come with age,
A shift of earth, of thought, of
Meaning in mortar and wood,
And of land rolling into sunrise.

Spiderweb

My childhood blooms
from a white house, with a log
house pulsing underneath (you
can see the wood bones when you
open the closets), and there is still
in the living room of that house, the
window, framed by a filmy curtain,
 delicately pulled back, by which
my grandma sat and quilted; her hands,
always her hands moving, needle in and out
of fabric from many places: a discarded
shirt, feed sack, house dress. There, too,
are still the strands of sun, that once fell
over her sewing basket, and, used to,
I would pick up remnant squares myself
and sew them together, though
as a child my stitches were long and
strayed, but in the sunlight my
grandma thought them perfect, small,
and straight like an arrow.
She gave me a quilt, made in a
pattern called Spiderweb, and she
said, "It's because you helped make
it". And there were the Spiderwebs
I created: geometrical rings of
cloth, moving outward like rings
made from a rock thrown in a
still pond. The house still stands, and
the window, though the ceilings sag, and
the floors sink, and there is no rocker in
the window where grandma used to sit.
Still, my childhood blooms and my life vines
out from these things.

Stop and remember.

The feeling of the needle and thread.

Memory

I am often adrift on memories. Memories are odd things. There are some that cling to you so tightly they pop up often and intensely into your mind like they are coming up for air, to stay alive. There are some that rub softly in your thoughts, leaving the trace of a feeling that you can't quite place. They are strange things, these memories, but beautiful things. Some are haunting things. Some wash over you and and leave you toe to toe with your mistakes. Some embrace you in the soft light of morning, and cause you to keep your eyes shut for as long as you can, even though you are awake. They are elegant and harsh, like the glass appendages of  a long forgotten chandelier. I am thankful for them. I could not recall my grandparents without them, or I could not recall the time I walked the riverbank behind my childhood home in winter alone, when the muddy shore was crusted over with ice. I couldn't remember first crushes, then first loves, and then first heartbreaks. They are stubbornly tenacious things, these memories. I am glad of that.


here is the way

I remember you

I wait for a lonely sky

black with stars forming

constellations that are

as obvious as words

spoken out of turn

lovely words falling

with a hollow sound

into conversations

where lovely words

don't belong

here I remember

you in this twinge

of self consciousness

of trying to pick up

from the ground

the things I've said

and placing them

somewhere inside

the folds of night

they are after all

words not meant

to be forgotten but

just lost in a cascade

of seconds tumbling
one after the other a
ceaseless onslaught of
time lost I place these
traces of memory where
I hope without knowing
you will stumble over
them and be caught
in them and be compelled
to remember me

Tides

The cobbled road of broken shells

lead her to the edge of the ocean,

a dividing line of high tide 

from the unencumbered sand,

then another line, where the surf

had broken and left a loamy trace

of white. She drew her toe

through the lacy imprint, 

where water had traced 

proof of existence as pretty 

as doily. A small wave

came, a remnant of 

something reducing

and reducing like a number

dividing into infinity.

It reached for the sand, the

fold of a transparent sail trying

to snare the slightest wind.

It removed the mark she left,

erasing the small valley that

sought to prove she was there,

on that small expanse of sand.

A shell caught in the intake of 

the ocean and rolled ridiculously 

back toward the water. How many

times had it been carried to the land, 

then to the sea, falling over itself

in the rise and fall of tides until

its outside was smooth like a

layer of curved glass? She 

said, that is a pretty one,

then let the sea take it.

The Last Stop

Embellishing old memories to mean new things. It's a sort of re-purposing of words... taking a discarded thought and making something pretty out of it.



Sadness is
a swimming
pool, rimmed
in a thin fingernail
of cement.

Sitting, at night,
on its edge,
the water was
Illuminated from
underneath.

Feet naked,
thoughts jagged,
I thought you could
save me.

I stared
into the bottle
of a drink I
didn't want.

I handed it back
to you. I didn't
speak when I left.

I searched for my
shoes as my footprints
evaporated behind
me on the sliver of
concrete, an erasing of
existence.

It felt like
that. Like I
had never been.

I doubt you
turned to watch me
leave, vanishing
footprints, behind the
wooden fence.

There was nothing
in the alley but
my empty hands.

Relic

Thinking about Kentucky, and all the old things out of which our oral history grows.


Salvation still lives
On the forest floor
Bound up in patina,
Sheathing the old
Claw foot tub like
The shiny lining of a
Tide battered shell.
It has rested there
Since before my
Memory, the tub,
A motionless
Ship clogging the
Narrow vein of a
Mountain creek.
Many times have I
Passed it, walking
With my mother.
She takes quick breaths
Amid bewilderment.
My grandpa was
Baptized in that tub.
That was the story-
And I forget how the
Tub made its passage
From a house to
This joint in the
Mountain to become:
A trough for the cattle,
A vessel for rain,
A small rusted dam
Covered over with
The things that burrow
Into the promise of
Life everlasting.
Jesus is found even
In the loneliness of
Places.