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.