Tradition of Oral History
Tradition of Oral History
There is a story my sister tells
on some restless summer nights
when she has come to visit
and the children have been put to bed
and she and I have remained—
slouched on the porch, staring out
over the cow pasture, sliding off
into that hour of night when the air
has that creamy smell of cedars
and all the years we have spent
watching them surge up and out
into this unusual world. Like all legends,
the story is riddled with gaps, voids
of time and rationale where the truth
we know (and do not know) can be lost
or found.
In the story, my mother
stands with a shotgun barrel rocking
against my father’s chest, promising
to follow through. It is my sister—watching,
crying, promising not to forget—who holds
my mother’s hand. And that is all.
I remember this scene at odd times—
like the answer to a childhood geography test
convecting out of a great, silver mist,
onto some small balcony of my mind—
and to this day, I do not know what it was
that created that night (or even if it really existed
in this or any other world). But the myth of it comes
back to me, over and again—through coves
of darkened memory, through the staggered isles
of waning birthday candles my years have grown into.
It is my haunted lighthouse, swinging its megaphone
back
and
forth
over me and every woman I have met
and refused to love.
from the collection “The Seldom Seen Kid”
click to hear me read this poem
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