poetry

Memory, Eight Years Old

The neighborhood boys are smiling
when they say they’re going to get knives
and come after me. I go into the house
and find my mother at the stove.
I ask her for the sharpest knife she has
but all she’ll give me is a plastic picnic spoon.
She laughs, tosses carrots in the pot,
and when I ask her for something more
to protect me from what’s coming
she pushes onions, pink cubes of ham
from a heavy plate into the boiling broth.
She doesn’t turn her head. So what
strange courage sends me from her house?
Her blue apron swings away as I take the spoon,
examine its opaque curve in the kitchen light,
touch it to my lips where it bends at the neck.
When I step outside, the boys are waiting in the yard.
I can’t see what they have flashing in their hands.
I let them chase me into the woods.
Dead leaves fly like sparks under my heels.

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To the bear that ate an entire 10 lb bag of sunflower seeds in my front yard this morning