Each time I pull a cookbook out to look for a recipe, my side by side stacks get a little more wobbly. And because I like to live dangerously, there are a few little, weird, breakable items (an old ashtray, holding a crystal candle holder, holding paper clips, pennies, and a lonely earring) in the middle that threaten to fall and shatter. Today I decided that holding my breath each time I walked by that bookcase was just silly (and I was getting lightheaded), so I started removing, dusting, replacing and balancing the tilty piles.
Under Salad Days by Marcel Desaulniers, I found a book I bought several years ago: Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry by Alan Dugan. Going right to the bookmark, I was, again, treated to poetry perfection.
Now I know what was calling me from the kitchen: It wasn’t the precarious pilings, but a poem unlike any other that brought me joy then, as it did again today.
Thesis, Antithesis, and Nostalgia
by Alan Dugan
Not even dried-up leaves,
skidding like iceboats on
their points down winter streets,
can scratch the surface of
a child’s summer and its wealth:
a stagnant calm that seemed
as if it must go on and on
outside of cyclical variety
the way, at child-height on a wall,
a brick named “Ann”
by someone’s piece of chalk
still loves the one named “Al”
although the street is vacant and
the writer and the named are gone.
