Mobile blogging....who knew??
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
From the book: Poems Of Today
HOUSEHOLD GODS
J.H. Macnair
The baby takes to her bed at night
A one-eyed rabbit that once was white;
A watch that came from a cracker, I think;
And a lidless inkpot that never held ink.
And the secret is locked in the tiny breast
Of why she loves these and leaves the rest.
And I give a loving glance as I go
To three brass pots on a shelf in a row;
To my grandfather's grandfather's loving-cup,
And a bandy-legged chair I once picked up.
And I can't, for the life of me, make you see
Why just these things are a part of me!
Poems Of Today
copyright 1924 Alice Cecilia Cooper
J.H. Macnair
The baby takes to her bed at night
A one-eyed rabbit that once was white;
A watch that came from a cracker, I think;
And a lidless inkpot that never held ink.
And the secret is locked in the tiny breast
Of why she loves these and leaves the rest.
And I give a loving glance as I go
To three brass pots on a shelf in a row;
To my grandfather's grandfather's loving-cup,
And a bandy-legged chair I once picked up.
And I can't, for the life of me, make you see
Why just these things are a part of me!
Poems Of Today
copyright 1924 Alice Cecilia Cooper
Digging
Digging into the past, whether you want to or not, becomes necessary sometimes.
Like when you have to go through all the leftover papers and paid bills and grocery lists and receipts of someone else's life.
Like when they die.
It isn't intentional, that this mess is left, even when it is a neatly bundled, correctly filed, alphabetical order of 50 or so years of their life. All of their life. From the time they got married (and sometimes before) they bundle and wrap and file away all the bits, keeping them in order, then there is a catastrophe, like one of the two dies, and it becomes exceedingly anal, all the life insurance, every bit of correspondence, all of it.
Filed in boxed, shoved into Ziploc bags, bundled with rubber bands.
What do I do with bank statements and paid bills that are 20 years old. They can't help me now. Because the rest of the story....what the check was for, if it was a loan, if it got paid back, why the receipts were kept, the ink is faded, it is all a great big mystery.
Maybe the questions could be answered, but now the owner is no longer there, or has a debilitating disease, or has dementia, or.... a million other things.
The papers become nonsense.
Except.
That they have a story too. A trail, a telling of the events in a life. The camping stickers, when the family went to Mackinac. The warranty on the flute when the daughter was in high school. The program from the play that the sister was in. The times, the memories, though unable to be embellished, those stories are there, and locked away, only in the memories of the players.
Do you remember when we.....
That's when Daddy did.....
Remember that time when she was rushed to the hospital for....
One great big remember party. Without the guest of honor.
Like when you have to go through all the leftover papers and paid bills and grocery lists and receipts of someone else's life.
Like when they die.
It isn't intentional, that this mess is left, even when it is a neatly bundled, correctly filed, alphabetical order of 50 or so years of their life. All of their life. From the time they got married (and sometimes before) they bundle and wrap and file away all the bits, keeping them in order, then there is a catastrophe, like one of the two dies, and it becomes exceedingly anal, all the life insurance, every bit of correspondence, all of it.
Filed in boxed, shoved into Ziploc bags, bundled with rubber bands.
What do I do with bank statements and paid bills that are 20 years old. They can't help me now. Because the rest of the story....what the check was for, if it was a loan, if it got paid back, why the receipts were kept, the ink is faded, it is all a great big mystery.
Maybe the questions could be answered, but now the owner is no longer there, or has a debilitating disease, or has dementia, or.... a million other things.
The papers become nonsense.
Except.
That they have a story too. A trail, a telling of the events in a life. The camping stickers, when the family went to Mackinac. The warranty on the flute when the daughter was in high school. The program from the play that the sister was in. The times, the memories, though unable to be embellished, those stories are there, and locked away, only in the memories of the players.
Do you remember when we.....
That's when Daddy did.....
Remember that time when she was rushed to the hospital for....
One great big remember party. Without the guest of honor.
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