The town of your childhood summers,
when you baked Portuguese sweet rolls
in the kitchen with Grandma. Went bass
fishing in the reservoir with Grandpa.
Made weekly trips to the county dump
since there was no household garbage pickup.
Where, in the house built out of redwood,
pencil marks on the door frame
between the kitchen and living room,
are growth rings and their associated
seasons, when your mother was a child.
And magnets on the refrigerator map
the history of travels to cities far
and wide, along with fading Polaroids.
Dawns, blue and chill, with their chorus
of roosters, and the still dreaming toad,
bejeweled with dew, on the glittering lawn.
Magical orb weavers in the tangerines,
adorning the lichen-nibbled branches
with spangled palaces spun out of air.
In afternoon, horses browsing the grass
on the opposing hillside. Their gently sloping
necks and swishing tails. A single egret
at sunset oaring home. And in the gloaming,
a soloing shama thrush, unseen, pouring
his soul out in liquid soliloquy.
A fire station, a community park,
post office and corner liquor store,
and on the one road rolling out
from town, where you crest the hill,
a church, “Jesus Coming Soon.”
always brightly lit at night. It’s the first thing
you see arriving and the last thing
you see leaving. And no sooner do you drive past
that first last message of welcome and warning,
when the road is pulled up behind you,
like clattering rungs snuck away in a tree,
(the time now till then hard and unredeemed)
as the lonely world opens before you.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 3.
Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours (SIU Press, 2021). Recent work has appeared in 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.See all items about Derek Otsuji
