Limits
Only he
Remembered the day we met
And only I
The day we said goodbye:
“Last day of June, our first blackberry pie,”
He always said.
A wood fire in the summer kitchen,
The hottest day.... A squall in the bedroom.
I can’t remember.
Nor he,
The December cube of clay,
The storm the day before,
How the bare trees
Played Giant Step in the dawn wind,
Or how
On the other bed, rhythmically
Touching her knuckles to the wall,
My mother slipped forever into fantasy.
Only he
Remembered the spoken hate
(Its change too sheepish to impart)
Saw daggers still growing
In bristling clump out of my heart.
I beg you, kids—no memorials, please.
Don’t write poems to me. Don’t bother.
What we said we said. What’s unsaid lacks ears.
In this I’m like my father.
Notes:
This poem is part of a special section of Poetry magazine's May issue
Copyright Credit: Eleanor Ross Taylor, "Limits" from Captive Voices. Copyright © 2009 by Eleanor Ross Taylor. Reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press.
Source: Poetry (May 2010)