Still Life, circa 1976
By Annmarie Lockhart
Response (poem and photo)
.
mosquito spray and chlorine
and hissing lights reflecting
off baselines and yellow
scuff, pong, scuff, pong,
scuff, scuff, “out!”
one summer of peace
and all the parents, still
coupled, playing doubles
right across from the
field they filled and froze
in winter for skating
like in the movies
before hockey teams
brought the year-round rink
before the family with the
long last name and the
long line of boys moved in
long before they hung
a cat off the bridge
that spanned summer
asphalt and winter pond
.
Home for the Holidays
By Ray Sharp
Inspiration Piece
.
Walking through the haunts of my youth,
along swollen streams that contour
the sinuous cleavage of limestone hills
thick with oak, hickory, ash,
beech, maple, tulip poplar,
dogwood, magnolia, and pine–
.
Goose Creek, Beargrass Creek,
Old Harrod’s Creek, Little Owl Creek,
and a thousand feeders
that percolate from caves and springs,
cold waters flowing unseen
like feelings you cannot articulate.
.
The farms have been subdivided
into one-acre lots
for two-income households
with three-car garages,
four bathrooms and five bedrooms each,
.
until all that remains
are the fence lines
where ghost horses run
along whitewashed sutures that stitch
fragmentary vestiges of the past.
.
It was this very place on LaGrange Road
where we came one Christmas, long ago,
to see a friend and wish him well.
When we called his mother,
she said John’s gone
to Central State to rest a spell.
.
There was the sting of wind-driven flurries,
the sudden heat of the linoleum hallway,
and a fear like bile rising in my throat.
I remember the heavy lidded stare
of sedation, mumbled words,
my friend’s efforts to cheer us all.
.
I could not bear to stay long,
but when we left the warmth
for the cold, outside world,
I wondered for the first time
who belonged inside the walls,
.
who beyond, and who decides,
where I would find
my home in the world,
and why we sometimes fear most
our own image reflected in leaded glass.
.
Now down Whipp’s Mill Road
and across North Hurstbourne Lane
to Hounz Lane, past the little park
where Dad and I played tennis
on hot summer nights.
I would run and run and run,
.
but he had a knack for flicking
one more shot just beyond my reach,
like a memory of bygone days,
so all I could do was watch it bounce,
one, two, three,
and dribble all the way to the fence.
.
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