Forgetting

Tags

Albuquerque, birds, New Mexico, poetry, sexual abuse, trees

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1952

The back of the garage, dim, dusty,
was my father’s makeshift workshop,
a table set between the lawnmower
and the rakes, hoes, pitchfork.
One fall afternoon when I was seven,
I found him there, wearing
his gray and maroon wool jacket,
repairing a lamp. I told him
if he didn’t stop doing those things
to me, I would tell my mother;
he looked at the ax on the wall,
said I’d better not.

Back out in the sunshine slanting
down on our peach trees, next door
the apple orchard, last of the fruit
picked over by birds, I forgot
for forty years the things he’d done
and went on doing. In the garden
the chrysanthemums, ruined by frost,
had been cut to the ground.

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Underground

Tags

astrology, Demeter, emotions, Greek mythology mythology, Persephone, poetry, sexual abuse

Deep in the earth, I walk in a tunnel,
I cannot live only in the sunshine;
the sound of faraway water, or is it a cello playing,
a woman weeping?

Persephone, forced to spend
half of each year down in the darkness;
in those cold times
her mother Demeter searched and wept,
searched and wept.

Tunnel divides, I go left,
through an arched doorway;
stairs lead downward, light dims,
soft shadows gather;
here a niche in the wall:
Blue Willow teacup, doll size,
drawing of a fairy,
letter from my cousin Lynelle.

More stairs, now I feel the cello, the shadows
in my blood, my bones,
they must be honored;
down here, rooms I never enter,
I know enough already;
I stand outside each door
and weep.

First Birthday

In a photo, thin, solemn, wide-eyed,
I sit in a high chair
in the back yard
of the little house with the red roof,
a cake with one candle
in front of me.

Afterward, put down for my nap,
wordless happiness,
life had changed:
balloons, presents, cake,
not the other.

When I woke up,
my father came in.
Nothing had changed.