Postcards from the Field Friday 6.25.21
Poem, Quotes, Cartoons
LET’S SAY WE HAVEN’T SEEN EACH OTHER SINCE NINTH GRADE AND WE MEET AS ADULTS AT A WELCOME CENTER IN SOUTHSIDE VIRGINIA
— by Dannye Powell, from the the 1995 collection At Every Wedding Someone Stays Home, published by the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR.
And we begin to kiss
the way we used to kiss
before you moved
with your parents
to Michigan: after school
out by the chain link fence
near the basketball court
on the sea wall
by the bay
in the church parking lot
after choir practice
flat on our backs
in the grass
at slumber parties
before the boys had to leave
or on the beach at Matheson
Hammock
when your sister
would drive us
then go off somewhere else
to work on her tan.
It takes us a few seconds
to adjust our arms
because you are taller now
but it all comes back
how we used to take turns
catching our breath
where your right ear lobe
is fleshy, how your collar smells
of heather, which tooth protrudes,
the scar on your chin
that used to be higher.
I can smell the cream
of gardenias in the purple bowl
on our homeroom teacher’s desk,
I can even remember her name—
Mrs. Bleier—and I can see the dance
of mimosas in the patio after lunch,
the hair on my arms standing up
when the sun slid behind clouds
and how you kept them up
until the sun eased out again,
the choir singing deep
and wide, deep and wide,
there is a fountain flowing
deep and wide
and how I always thought of you
instead of Jesus when we sang
I’ve got the joy joy joy joy
down in my heart, down in
my heart,
the way I do now, kissing you
at a Welcome Center
just over the state line
in Southside Virginia.
—
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
And, that is all I have!
🦋💙tish