Friday, December 28, 2007

puckers of embroidered smocking

I feel like I'm haunting my office. I must be the only soul here today...

The other day, going back over some favorite books, I rediscovered Sharon Olds' poem, Parents' Day. Lately I've been trying to pay close attention to any physical sensations, however slight, that come in the wake of reading books, poems, articles, emails, whatever. On reaching the last line of the below bit of loveliness, I felt the customary shiver, but it's interesting: there have been a few times in recent weeks, in the last week even, that the chill has come before the fact--the effect just before the cause, in a way. And I'm referring to first-time reads here, not re-reads. And it's not like I'm being impacted primarily by the gist, or by a line/word that precedes some more-obviously impactful line/word, or at least I don't think this is the case. I really do get the sense that I'm responding to something yet to come. Maybe it's evidence of firmly established trust in certain writers. Whatever it is, it's exciting.

Parents’ Day

I breathed shallow as I looked for her
in the crowd of oncoming parents, I strained
forward, like a gazehound held back on a leash,
then I raced toward her. I remember her being
much bigger than I, her smile of the highest
wattage, a little stiff, sparkling
with consciousness of her prettiness--I
pitied the other girls for having mothers
who looked like mothers, who did not blush.
sometimes she would have braids around her head like a
goddess or an advertisement for California raisins--
I worshipped her cleanliness, her transfixing
irises, sometimes I thought she could
sense a few genes of hers
dotted here and there in my body
like bits of undissolved sugar
in a recipe that did not quite work out.
For years, when I thought of her, I thought
of the long souring of her life, but on Parents’ Day
my heart would bang and my lungs swell so I could
feel the tucks and puckers of embroidered
smocking on my chest press into my ribs,
my washboard front vibrate like scraped
tin to see that woman arriving
and to know she was mine.

Posted by princess kanomanom @ 11:28 AM