Cherished

Discarded Memories: cherished series, opus 4

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Our family bible was leather bound with gilt edges, like a large coffee-table book, except it sat on an out-of-the-way end table. Mother listened raptly to the door-to-door salesman and agreed. Books you own are a sign of pedigree. And then she filed away the precious threads of her life between its pages.

I used to sit fingering the bits and pieces of family history. Poems on scraps of paper with her handwriting: 1944 ~ Bud this is how much I love you. There was yellowed newsprint: Arthur Petitclair, dead at 58 with the smiling face of my grandfather staring out at me. A fragile, stained news clipping introduced Butch, the cousin I never met. …tragically found dead in his bed on Tuesday morning, at age eight, by his mother, Helvie Petitclair. There were holy cards of Mary and Saint Francis, and handmade cards drawn in those primary color thick crayons we had in grade school.

My parents called. We sold the house and everything in it to a nice young family.  Everything? Everything. We just want to move on.

A nice young family? I suppose they held the bible upside down and shook out all those scraps of history. They probably sit and read the real text inside the leather cover.

The Framed Dream: cherished series, opus 3

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NaPoWriMo  Day 17 without a prompt.   A constant in everyone’s life is the ability to dream. In your sleep and in your waking time. But what do we do when that dream is unfulfilled – stopped dead in its tracks?  Sometimes by a conscious choice, sometimes by circumstances that present themselves, wanted or not. 

 

The Framed Dream

It was a short notice: Helen is predeceased by Bud
and Charles Gruenwald Jr, her husband and son.
God knows, she’d lived the last eight years
impatiently waiting to join them.

It moved with her when she was left alone.
An eight by ten picture from a 1930s
Life Magazine: young nurse in white cap
surrounded by glowing light.

Her nurses training lasted six months.
Instead of earning a nurse’s pin
she eloped and eight months later
put my brother to her breast.

The room was empty when I took it down.
Water-stained backing, script barely readable
My dearest Helen, No one can take this away
from you. Sister Everista 1937   For sixty years,
she’d kept her dream in a plastic frame.

The Table: cherished series, opus 2

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Celebrate National Poetry Writing Month  NaPoWriMo   Writing Prompt Day 7: a poem about something that has value or worth.

Cherished items, people, and places live in our memories. And because we lead transient lives, their meaning and clarity can evolve over time. Old photos call forth recollections. 

 

The Table

She found the table at Marshall Fields
in nineteen forty-nine, and pictured
her family at exactly half-past six each night
four plates, four forks, knives and spoons.

White oak, the Illinois state tree
with tight growth rings
durable, resilient, and
carved with artisan’s care.

Emotions buffed artfully into lustrous patina
over years marred by scratches, chips and burns
tuna-noodle-pea casseroles set forgetfully upon the wood
and forks slammed down in anger.

Keeping up with Rita, Gwen, and Claire
teflon pans and a formica table-topper
emotions erupt on modernity as leftovers
disappear in a single swipe of the hand.

Uncle Jim – cherished series, opus 1

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A Prose Poem? Never created in this form before — sort of like a short story, but shorter and more musical? And so begins the Cherished Series.

Jim

Uncle Jim

We hadn’t seen each other in more than twenty years. Now, here I am, watching him peer out of a torn screen door in a mobile home park. I feel his thinness in our hug.

He leads me into the kitchenette where a yellow Tupperware pitcher of pink lemonade sits on the table. There are two metal glasses, one red and one purple. The sticky cardboard can, on its side in the sink.

He listens for a while, to the latest stories about my kids. Do you have any pets? Before I can answer his eyes glance down and he starts talking about Cindy, the black lab he had for so many years. You remember Dickie, my second wife? Well, she just didn’t like dogs and so I couldn’t…..  and his voice trails off. This seems like a nice park I say, filling in the silence. Oh I love the dances and the bingo parties. All the ladies want to dance with me since Dickie died. But I’m not up to any of it so much anymore.

It took an hour to walk the small grocery store. We came back with ten cans of soup, applesauce packs, a quart of nonfat milk, some Comet and three chicken pot pies.

On my way to his place I was thinking it would be nice to see Uncle Jim in his twilight years. But it’s dark going home and I never did see any fireflies lighting up the sky.