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It’s not a place I particularly want
to remember
but since you’re curious
I’ll say
it was a stretch of water
a half mile across
at highest tide,
a narrow channel at low,
and I lived there
two years too long.
The house was on the east shore,
a battered shack with a cedar roof
you could see through on a dry summer day.
Out back was a deck built on pilings into the bay.
I kept a line in the water
on a bamboo pole
to bring a surprise supper
once in awhile.
At low tide the line was
a pendulum,
hooking air fish.
The place was all one room.
Roughsawn walls,
a deep brown even though
the exterior faded years ago
to neutral grey.
In summers the walls still oozed pitch
and filled the place
with a dry, sweet smell.
If you put your fingertips
to the wood
they came away
smelling musty and foreign.
You could still see the saw marks
on the boards.
Sometimes,
when I leave a place,
and may be coming back,
and may not be,
it locks into my memory
as though it will always exist,
just like that,
just as I left it.
That’s how I remember that day,
the window open,
the curtain moving
in the breeze off the bay.
A starched blouse waving on a line
strung between the house and a shore pine.
A blouse like your blouse,
but stark white,
bleached to the bone.
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--Submitted by johnbarkus on 2012-10-20.
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Amber:
This is strong imagery.
Posted 02/13/2013 08:58 AM
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johnbarkus:
I never made that connection, but of course it's right - I'm a huge Wyeth fan and that open window must have come from Wyeth's Wind from the Sea. JB
Posted 10/30/2012 08:11 PM
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John:
Much like an Andrew Wyeth painting, whose surfaces are "bleached to the bone." A strong poem.
Posted 10/25/2012 08:33 AM
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