Memory Strings
Last month of the year and I look backwards as I gather
up light strings, seek burned-out bulbs that keep the rest
from shining, bad apple in the barrel, bad hat, Spanish boy
in the Madeline books, two straight lines of little girls in boater hats
my mother wore, straw with dark-blue ribbons trailing down her back.
Before I could write my own story, she tried to cram my little brain
so full of memories I’d have enough in case she was taken early
as her mother was. Now I string memories of our conversations,
twine them round my elbow, proper way to wind back
wire so it doesn’t tangle, as fairy lights get bungled
if not wound up right.
Untangling memories. As painful as the weekly ritual performed on the edge
of my parents’ bed, my mother spraying “No More Tears,”
patiently working snarls out of our long hair, my sister’s and mine.
Snarls sit between us to this day. We shy away from that particular pain,
live with matted roots of difference, old resentments, unhealed wounds.
We share a mother, father, brother, and memories we don’t discuss.
They stay wound round our hearts, connecting and dividing,
bad apple in the barrel, the turning worm, one darkening blue bulb
that yet still burns.
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Pick Up Sticks
Hold slender pointed shafts in fist, spread fingers, let them fall,
soft clatter on linoleum or scarred wood floors of childhood,
scatter-pattern, pick-up sticks. Find the one that won’t
disturb the rest, the way my best friend tried and failed,
how she learned when she was ill and couldn’t count
on local friends, their lives so precariously balanced,
one change and the entire structure should collapse.
Day after a winter’s day of rain and wind, I stride about our small
backyard, bending and stooping, contented in the finally-cold air
to pick up sticks, fuzzed twigs, thin branches, chunks and limbs
of splintered oak and birch and maple, too many to count
the way I do with my student who learns more slowly,
who has to be reminded: touch each piece as you count it,
the way I touch and slide sea glass on my study sill,
whisper blessings as I move them over.
Twig by broken twig, branch by supple branch, the pile mounts.
Pick up sticks. What else can I do? Lie down on the ground
and give up, or pick up where I can, make tidy my small corner
once again, knowing it is futile, the trees may one day all come
crashing to the ground, the sky itself fall in, but on this morning,
I pick up sticks as if I could only find the pattern, the gathering
would keep the harm at bay.
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Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in New England, where she teaches English Language Learners at a public elementary school. Her work has appeared in such places as Sky Island Journal, The Plenitudes, and Dodging the Rain. Her first collection, Weathering Agents, was released in Summer 2023 by Beltway Publishing.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 