Diane Kendig

OUR TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR

 

We walk in Highland Park on a New Year's Day

as warm and muddy as Rochester has known.

En route, we stayed the Eve here, once our home

sixteen years ago. We'd come, newly returned

from overseas for a new job, happy owners

of a puppy, neighbor to downtrodden stoners,

a crack house, Lilac Cleaners, and Oscar's Deli.

That past come back so hard, I could weep:

sister and mother still alive, no deep

betrayals from those I loved the most,

my father not locked up on some doctor's dope--

a beginning and not at the end of my rope.

 

So I keep remembering moments

here with the dog: the spot she'd stand and stare

waiting for her favorite mutt, or over where

she'd watch for the Rot who hated

everyone but her, and where, to their thrill,

she'd steal mittens off kids on the sledding hill.

 

How the two of you ran, careening

down a slope that was higher still. I recall

and recall her, my darling, my doll,

so not to recall her, and myself, after the long slide

slowly down and down, through tumors

and other jobs, moving, affairs and small town rumors.

 

Along the way, I found my Dutch and my Scottish kin,

and have arrived here, by chance, at this moment of time

for once and for all and for auld lang syne.

 

 

 

BIO: Diane Kendig‘s latest books of poetry are Woman with a Fan and Prison Terms. She co-edited  In the Company of Russell Atkins, a tribute anthology. Kendig ran a prison writing workshop for 18 years, and now curates the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s  weblog “Read + Write.” dianekendig.com