Poetry 2017 / 069

For today’s prompt, write a memory poem. Pick a memory, any memory. It can be a significant event, but sometimes there are beautiful insignificant moments (that ironically are very significant–quite the paradox). Mine your memories to come up with something good today.

A View to Rowney Green

The loft at my father's house

had no ladder

just a dressing table and bookcase

followed by a chin-up

and a foothold on the picture rail.

The room was vast,

warm from the east-west windows

and an acre of glassfibre matting.

Dead flies crowded the windowsills

their dying breaths looking out over the fields

they would never visit.

House spiders roamed among the mortar dust

spinning webs across the steps between joists

and shunning the dips of lathe and plaster

of bedroom ceiling ankle traps.

Old copies of Popular Gardening,

my childhood farm and doll's house,

the metal trunk of my mother's wedding dress

and funeral veil. My sisters African doll,

her dress grimy with unshod tears,

still able to groan out Mama

when tilted on her back.

The open window

and the drop to the pavement below,

emptying the attic space for the house to be sold,

the redemption of childhood

under the hammer.