I called up my childhood and it came
the wounded kitten with its matted fur
a tall nun skipping with her skirts pinned up
hatpins, honeysuckle, liquorice, waterwings
my gentle grandpa stretching his hands out to the fire.
The Banshee came, and the Great Cat
the silky scarf my mother bound her hair with
the rosary, soupbones, all my lost friends
a red cloth apple filled with cotton wool.
All my hurts, all my delights to come
are there, sewn deep into the world.
What do I know but this?
My long legs take my body on
through high country, thinner air
my body in its coat of breath
and at the heart of it, the child alive.
photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/75920141@N02/8217291075/
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What a wonderful poem about childhood! Thanks for sharing it. Has it been published elsewhere?
Thanks Dorothy. No, I don’t think so. It’s quite an old poem that I don’t believe I’ve even sent out. I have a vague memory that I did is as an exercise for a list poem.
Shivers of delight in reading this. Your Grandpa and the cotton apple were in one of your haibun, right? Thank you —
This one is by the other half of Gert. Strange that both of us quite independently came up with these two images of childhood.
That’s fascinating. Do either of you have the apple? Your Grandpa must have been a wonderful person.
No, the apple is only a memory. The reason we know it was filled with cotton wool is that one of us- not telling- bit it. He was a quiet man with a domineering wife, as was the case with our grandparents on the other side. Our husbands might say the pattern survives.