three poems, about three places i feel like home.

with all the devastation in the world hitting me rather hard these days, i've had the urge to write about the things in my life & history that bring me the most comfort and safety. here are the three poems that have come from that:

7/17/14 - Untitled

I think it was Judy

who started the tradition of not looking back.

It's too hard, the story goes. When you’re walking off, just walk off. You’ll be back next year.

I cried as I drove Middle Road to Beetlebung

my mind and muscles steeped with memories

stronger than my mom’s morning tea.

The home-i-ness of a home that isn’t enclosed by walls

that’s more permanent than any man-made structure 

that’s about the way the hills roll, or the signs are painted

not just the house we happen to be renting.

I don't mind the obvious changes - irksome as the now-bad pizza is - it's the ones that are slow over time that get me. 

Like a snail you can't tell is moving

until you see a small trail of slime along the ground.

The rock that was once our endless playground has been eroded so much so

it finally looks like the moated castle I often believed it could be.

The waves seem small now, and surf rough

I can't tell if the tide has actually shifted 

or if my memories of afternoon-long body surfing fests

are just a 9-year-old's interpretation of a couple full-mooned ocean swells.

Cherries and chips, pretzels and dried mango, warm tap water with an occasional treat of cooler-ed seltzer from friends far more prepared than I – the snacks to sustain any good beach afternoon.

I’m not sure what “the witching hour” means

(apologies if its racist or otherwise offensively derived)

but I swear the phrase was created to describe Lucy Vincent at dusk

like Hocus Pocus, our favorite movie one year --

touted as spooky craft, but really just the suspense

of finding one’s place

the magic of knowing you’ve got people.

Anyways,

at LVB its hardly just the sky, the sun still glaring but dulling in its heat

it’s the atmosphere of a deserted desert

prideful as the ones who persevered, patiently waiting for this coveted time,

who have too much fun with each other to care that the gate might lock us in.

By the time we leave, the once-full parking lot is a dusty ghost town,

our few remaining cars awkwardly peppered up the slope.

We wave arms out open windows as we peel off towards our own homes.

We have chance meetings on the sandy wooden porch of our favorite overpriced store,

drop by unannounced to borrow sunscreen,

coordinate dinners and consult on medical advice

like we were cousins in some big extended family busting the seams of a small town.

The difference is, for many years we didn’t have a picture of each other's lives outside of this tiny island – 50 weeks would spin by with nary a phone call.

And yet somehow year after year we’d settle back in without skipping a beat, as if a colorful autumn, harsh winter, or rainy spring hadn’t intervened along the way.

I’m thankful to say the passing of time has brought so many threads of our lives together, even the bad ones –

weddings, birthdays, cancers,

bat mitzvahs, interstate moves, career changes,

couch-crashing, midyear texts, impromptu invites to broadway plays --

our crew has broken the seal of summer lovin’; at some point when I wasn’t looking we crossed over from pals to kin.

Even Barrel now shows up on my gchat list.

I see the age on us all

the older adults 

- I call them that because I am an adult too, though still relatively so -

have settled into themselves 

are easier, somehow.

Grudges have ebbed and wounds been stitched (though scars remain). They've seen a lot of life and survived.

What's left is more giggles, 

softened skin alongside softened hearts

small bellies where tautness once held stiff

eyes melted into crows feet

like branding from the sunshine of so many beach days.

We have grown older, too

more and more of the seed of the people we each always have been

remarkably parallel though such distinct characters.

It was our un-diapered bottoms we all have to thank for this.

Some parents become grandparents

more generations distinguishing the passing of time  

napping new babes under the same umbrellaed shade. 

Some parents become more like friends: 

what’s 30 years when you’ve lived almost that long or longer?

We rub elbows like peers, though I take comfort in knowing that

somewhere in each of us

you’re always still mommas and papas and I’m always still the kid.

I just peeked out my airplane window

one of a dozen passengers patiently awaiting a stalled takeoff

and the sunset takes my breath away.

I’ve seen hundreds on this island - can conjure the smell of Menemsha in a snap, the view from the Gay Head cliffs

the sound of applause for the cycle of another day’s completion.

************************
where the house once stood

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

that's where the porch swing outlived the cat

rocking countless secrets shared, 

coffees sipped, 

flirtations exchanged, 

wines poured,

phone conversations whispered. 

where the front yard never went more than a season

without a cheaply-made laminated sign hammered into the edge of the street

commanding that passers-by "say no on 2" or "vote for deval" or simply to "go slow, children playing."

  

for years we had a record player (do you know what that is?) 

and more afternoons than i can possibly recall

were spent choreographing dances to Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 

double-pirouettes more achievable on the hardwood living room floors.

where em and i were always burning the midnight oil, sprawled on the wraparound couch, 

and she taught me how to take off my own bra with one hand.

the same couch waiting, years later, to cushion mom as she slept off the codine and the migraines. 

that's where we had a front door 

that we didn't know how to lock til last year

thank god

because it meant kathy could burst through, unannounced

one christmas when her family came back from the movies

to find a gunman in their home across the street. 

we now spend every christmas night with them. 

where dad won his first election,

where i got my acceptance to wesleyan,

where 20 rugby teammates had an impromptu slumber party, 

where we played "cards against humanity" with our neighbors, and the under-30 crowd had to explain to our dads what a glory hole was.

that's where the room above 

housed iterations of adolescence.

the closet walls still markered-up from a third grader's baby-sitters club meetings

our graffiti a reminder of when imagination was lived into reality. 

the lofted nook, now crowded with storage

was once the only safe place to hide from the world

(to try and hide from myself). 

i'd listen to my favorite indigo girls cd on repeat, by just leaning over the edge to the mounted shelf

and pressing play on my new boom box.

and the roof - oh, that roof!

where stages of transgressions plodded along with the times:

initially crawling out there to sit was radical enough, sunning our pre-pubescent bodies and pointing fingers at boys biking by.

then it was first cigarettes and bowls - objectively stupider to do outside than in

but we felt so much more hip getting to be under the stars. 

then there was margot. margot on the roof. 

that's where we had a magic room. a sunroom.

smelling of incense (or "incense"), stocked with ram daas, plush with yoga pillows.

where as children abby and i would beg to stay together, instead of our own separate beds,

so every tuesday night when dad was gone

mom would snuggle between us and sing us sleepward.

where in that same bed, in later years, i made sarah make me come out to her.

for one year we had a back patio

that i discovered with our backyard neighbor - a 10 x 10 patch of concrete where a garage once stood.

putting our younger siblings to work, my new friend and i cleaned that back patio so hard! 

that was the summer of our moms perfecting their frozen margaritas,

the summer i learned about divorce,

the summer i had a best friend

leave.

this house is where high school drama 

led all sorts of girlfriends (not that kind) to come crying at my front stoop, 

in the days when we had our drivers licenses but not a cell phone.

the house where mom and dad have taken in any young person in need of a home

tiki sarah emily emily cori emily izzy hannah sarah kali olivia marli harper kate

evermore 20 and 30 somethings staying for dinner or unforeseen nights 

hammering chinks in the walls of nuclear family isolation.

someday

i hope a long way off from now

we are going to look and say

"that's where the house once stood."

***************

Iland [sic] 

On the inevitable rainy afternoon
we sit on musty couches
and leaf through old gold-plated guest books.
Year, after year, after year
searching for our own signatures
as if anything would be changed -
recognizing childhood scrawls
piecing together anecdotal notes
to re-craft full blown memories of summers past.

The year we wove endless friendship bracelets,
the year I was allowed to drink my own gin & tonic,
the year of competitive card-playing.

The year you could tell would be Grandpa's last, when the paths got steeper for no one but him
the year we all knew was Al's final visit,
the year Lee died and we came just in time to haul in docks and sunset summer.

It really is timeless.
The 7 years olds still eagerly gong the bell that calls us to meals
that 20 years ago i too, eagerly rang
a bell that to me will forever signal "quick, dive into the food!" --
an impolite and notorious family trait that sweetly contradicts
the elite mannerisms of the origin story of this place.

As the world burns
on every other square mile of earth, it seems
except ours --
my baby nieces squat on the deck, busily crafting a fairy house
of uprooted moss and found birch bark.
Adorned in their found treasure -
tarnished rings, thick gold chains, a tattered black flag worn as a doo-rag, with a strip of lace trailing down the back of a Peter Pan aged boy.
What was a nightmare at bedtime turned to adventure by daylight.

Oh to live in a land of magic,
Of pirate maps and shooting stars,
Of bedtime river dips,
stifled high-pitched squeals as
white bodies shimmered like silkies in the Super Moon
surrendering into the blackness of open water.

Loons, ducks, a rumored porpoise (perhaps sent by the Whale) -
reincarnation here lives like the legends that will outlast us all,
gives us purpose for returning indefinitely - mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles
who went ashes to ashes, dust to dust
not to be abandoned or forgotten in the hemlock trees and stone ledges.

Wind whistles through the attic windows
as cousins crawl into sleighbeds (or sometimes cozy into single ones)
to gossip about new crushes,
giggle at uncle's dinnertime conversation,
let tears flow freely on recent heartbreaks.
Whispers of new school anticipation or autumnal moves
as August backs up into September.

The only place in the world I'd cry to lose the scent of mothballs,
the incessant creak of all floorboards,
the swing and slam of screen doors,
the curtains of spiderwebs made daily afresh in every doorway.

The sun sets over the rocks
another day come and gone.
If we're lucky,
if we remember to not forget,
another will come again.