Page 46 - WTP Vol. V #2

Choctaw Road
I.
Yesterday, I drove my daughter out west on Choctaw Road just to show her the country mile I came from.
I wanted her to see the sunset that has sustained me - the scissortails on the telephone wires,
the ponds her Papa wrestled from the red dirt,
the back porch where her Grannie churned ice cream.
I wanted her to see the little blue house where my Mama loved my Daddy
and they both loved me.
But I barely recognized the ruined
orchard, crowded out by a double wide,
the prize winning pear tree, gaunt as a graveyard gothic,
or the cottonwood where all us cousins had carved our initials - now, lightning split and leaning,
with our scratches burned away. II.
I didn’t know what to say to my little girl to bridge the awful before and after.
What could I do but try to pick
a flower from the wild, weedy overgrowth of my history,
talk it real to her as it is to me? What could I do but reach
back as far as I could reach to where the old stories sleep unrusted and shiny as a night’s first firefly?
What could I do but try
to trap one in a Mason jar and spill it
into the tender cup of her hands? 37
Kelli simpson