Kingfisher Cove

Where are YOU From?

I've been encountering this in Blogsville (everywhere!) lately, and I decided to take on the assignment.  And it was a lot of fun.  I suppose it's a little like a meme, but a high-quality one.  It definitely makes you think.  My first glimpse of this was on Verbatim's blog, and it apparently started with Fred at Fragments from Floyd.  The following is his introduction to the "assignment".  (Are you curious yet?)

George Ella Lyons is an Appalachian author and poet with a long list of children's books to her credit. Her poem, Where I'm From, begins in this way: "I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the black porch. (Black, glistening it tasted like beets.)" Each of us is from a place that is more than a dot on the map. Every experience that we can recall has left its mark on who we are. Nobody is from Clorox, but can't you smell the laundry room at the poet's house as a little girl?

I'd like to make a suggestion-- not just to the 'writers' who read this, but to everyone. Actually, putting on my teacher hat: this is your assignment:  Read the original poem [below] -- Then, write your own version-- where you're from. You might be surprised what you find as you rummage around in those dusty old trunks--your personality, your family history and traits, and the places you've called home--as you complete the poem with your own memories and facts.  It will be interesting to see the small, peculiar things we each select to define where we are from.

The original poem is on the left, my version is on the right (click for larger version):

Your turn!

SHATTERED

I've read so many posts by moms about the effects of divorce on the children. Where are the dads?

The coffee cools
And the child's cheeks are wet against my chest.
We rock in the wake of patterned sunlight
filtered through the blinds.

After time
his little fingers graze mine
and with a hitching breath,
he slips from my lap.

He plays with Legos on the floor.
I sip cold coffee.

I see before me
the choices of a man,
the remnants of his deeds,
the damage left behind.

The sunlight dims
and the child sleeps beside a pile
of plastic rubble, toppled in rage.

I bend to pick up the pieces.

TAP DANCE

From a previous life...

TAP DANCE

I still tap dance
around the oil spot in the driveway
which glistens like beads of black blood,
though nobody parks there
anymore.

I used to dance on broken eggshells
he spewed at my feet
and I was unaware of my slashed soles
because I never looked down.

He convinced me I had weak feet.
I convinced myself to keep dancing.

My stage was the swing of his moods;
I tapped around the discord of his wrath
and high-stepped to the melody of his charm.

Then he took the final bow.

I sometimes wonder
if she feels the need to dance.

I wonder if she will ever learn
the intricacies
of the steps.

I dance alone now,
watching the ground
to avoid oil slicks and slashed soles.

I'm taking lessons.

September in Seattle

SEPTEMBER IN SEATTLE

The espresso cart
sways between the cobblestone mortar
in the September shade of a breezy alder.

I lean over the black metal railing
and watch the waif behind the cart
spin her coffee dance between the grinder
and Seattle's Best beans,
leggings shimmering,
Birkenstocks gliding
among the nutty-sweet syrups.

Patrons in ponytails
of both genders
gather to hear the wood flute
and I sip a hot frothy mocha with them
as birds skitter over the Wallingford
cobblestones.

I'm a native
of the steamers on the pier,
of the fire-gilded skyline
in the tilted September sun,
of the ferries docking
in the white-flock of seagulls.

I savor the coffee-song,
belonging,
a visitor from twenty miles south

seriously considering
growing out my hair.

APOLOGY

APOLOGY

So,
when I read your amazing letter to me
apologizing for your 18 years of existence,

When you said you appreciated my composure during our
struggle when your dad left...

When you expressed genuine regret
for the time I answered the phone at two a.m. from the cops
catching you smoking dope at the 7-11 parking lot,
and again
shoplifting at the neighborhood drugstore...

When you thanked me for loving you
because otherwise I wouldn't have come to pick you up...

When you said that I gave you the talks you needed
and the punishments you deserved...

When you were regretful for excluding me from seeing you
in your senior prom tux,
but thanked me for ensuring it was your best night ever possible...

When you said that you appreciated having a mom as great as me
and that even though you've sometimes said (in anger) that I wasn't there for you,
I was,
you said,
never not there for you...

When you ended your amazing letter saying: "I love you so much"...

I ran to the bathroom to puke,
to sob,
to scream,
to slump against the tile wall and dredge, scour, grasp for breath that I couldn't reach,
couldn't seize

because I thought
you'd written
a suicide note.

The Chair

THE CHAIR

The chair broke unexpectedly,
spewing stuffing and splinters,
collapsing in bewildering betrayal,
irrevocably broken.

Pulled myself from the carnage,
reeling from the aberrant tilt
of what I'd perceived was an upright world.

Dusted off remnants of lullabies
and dried coffee stains,
aged,
but not nearly old enough.

Felt a shift in balance,
felt a pivot in perception,
felt injured from a source
alien to home-plate slides or lovers leaving.

Chairs aren't supposed to break.

Reflected on the notion of neglect
and poured a cup of coffee,
sipped it standing up.

Approached the new chair warily,
adversaries in a stand-off, wounds barely healed;
sat down
slopping coffee.

Scrubbed it spotless.

Growing Seasons

My friend is a horticulturalist and the only female farm manager for a large wholesale tree farm in Oregon. She's been there for 26 years....

GROWING SEASONS

In the sprawling daybreak shadow of Mt. Hood
she traverses tractor ruts
and inspects the endless tidy rows of saplings
quivering in the irrigation mist.

Company time is an hour away,
when the Mexican farm hands murmur among the ranks
and the paperwork begins in earnest tracking
of the bottom line.

She will repair the tractor,
blonde wisps escaping her wool hat,
work boots emerging from the tractor's underbelly,
in striking contrast to the Christmas party visage
when her hair swung free
and nobody recognized her.

She will drive her own rig to the meeting of managers
and park among a sea of Company trucks,
and she will endure the cold indifference of the Company receptionist
who reserves her warmth for those equipped with gun racks.

The sun rises
to the dank fan-spray of the greenhouses,
to the jangle of keys
and the protesting whine of a broken tractor.

Throughout the growing seasons,
she has weathered the thriving fields,
propagated and cultivated,
cried at employee funerals,
and taken home stray cats.

Workers clock in for an honest day's work
on Company time
at the Pussy Farm.

Boy, have things changed....

THE DRYER

I no longer find acorns in the dryer
tumbled from your pockets.

Nickels and quarters sometimes,
and crinkle-dried dollars
you like to carry
but never spend.

In the summer
I pull agates from the maw
of the giant pseudo-polisher,
saltwater stripped,
ready for stuffing
in your Ninja Turtle belly pack.

As your still-small hands reclaim treasures,
tip-toes stretching to the dryer top,
red hair shimmering at waist level,
I realize

soon I won't peer down at the top of your head,
or feel your pleasure at the sight of a lost Lego,
and instead of boyhood trinkets,
I'll find a tumble-dried condom,
package intact,
opportunity forgotten,
childhood transformed.

Already
I mourn
the passing of the acorns.

A VISIT TO GRANDMA & GRANDPA'S
MAIN STREET STORE

They sold mens’ hats,
patterns and fabric,
buttons on cards,
Buster Browns,
and old-lady rain bonnets folded like tiny maps
and you could never get them back that way again.

Grandpa always let me pick one out
and I would choose polka dot
and the ones that snapped under your chin
were the best.

I would stand before the 3-way mirror in home-sewn pedal pushers
that Mom made me from Grandma’s fabric remnants,
and I would check out the 3-way tilt of musty fedoras
shadowing my eyes.

The store front opened to Main Street
and sometimes a parade passed beyond the finned tails of angled-in cars
and the bass drums would rumble through the sidewalk,
tickling my tummy.

The old blind man
(I think his name was Al)
came by with his seeing-eye golden retriever
and the grown-ups would talk anti-welfare
while I petted the dog and later got in trouble for it.

“That dog has a job to do and can’t be distracted!”

The store had the comfortable scent of old folks and clutter,
and each time the front door squealed on its hinges,
Grandma in her polyester purple pant suit greeted someone familiar.

They sipped perked coffee from chipped ceramic cups with pink swirls
they stored beneath the countertop container of plastic combs.

They shared a party line with the Coast-to-Coast store across the street
and impaled carbon sales receipts of work pants and rubber boots
with a gracious smile.

Bored at last, I would retreat to the back,
avoiding the ominous shadows and rust stains of the neglected wash room,
and I’d bang away on the electric adding machine,
eventually drifting to sleep among the stacks of ledgers.

At home, down the highway,
they were building a mall.

AFTERMATH

There must be a rainbow.

Clouds still threaten in the fringes
and pavement steams
in the aftermath of a gully-washer.

Remember the sunlight spires
radiating a ring of daggers
like a celestial dome in the sky?

Remember the certainty
that to shinny up a shimmering beam
would lead to heaven?

Prism rain-beads scatter in the rinsed aura,
bumbershoots fold like a flock of tropical wings,
eyes blink back blindness and scan the horizon
for watercolor paint strokes.

Then it appears--
a splendid band of hues contouring the skyline,
a timeless arch tilting heads,
pocketing childhood,

and promising penance
for Noah's ancient flood.