Stones of Help: My Ebenezers

Wonder Years This is your prime time, grandson, When you thrill to find bugs, See birds and look at the moon, Before your T-ball friends capture you And take you to the land of cyberspace, Pizza, movies and the mall. Thank God for years of wonder At the treasures of a kitchen, Pots and pans to make a world Of parades and pretending Before you subscribe to boredom, The required rite of teen-ageing. Today you saw a flower blooming, Your eyes gleamed with awe As you said, “Let’s leave it here To be beautiful for everyone who sees.” I would wish to leave you here as well So beautiful in your prime time. A New Bookstore Identity-deprived, this symphony of syllables. Coffee bar? Haute deli? Meeting place? Clerks mechanically take the treasure with computer gaze and voice, “Was-everything-all-right?” calculate sales, scanning screens for inventory errors. Where flawed? Collections complete, reading areas convenient. Comfort must be worn like a bedroom shoe. This space is not molded to the fit, Even more─ there is no reverence! Genesis Young in age; old in heartbreak, Peering with fear from window screen While highway headlights made A boxcar procession, moving slowly, Rotating in darkness on the wall. His father never came that night at all. The house emptied of contentment With each bottle sip taken intentionally To numb disappointment and resentment Of years and lifetimes ago, a continuing Cascading dose of pain unidentified. The craving chemistry of brain Must be sated, whatever price. Love, family, future─ each sacrificed To an insidious fluid of false promises─ Reducing pain to drunkenness. All false! Tomorrow came with clinging light. The hopeful child still crying in his night Where reality became abandonment. He left the window with resolution To scramble in his chest of toys, Digging for the bottle of his babyhood Which he never threw away. The Asparagus Bed Gone Six broken steps remain from summer days sitting in the rain waiting for the bus to town. A heaved sidewalk leads to where our house once was wrapped by the porch we learned to skate on. Here sixty years ago, short, wiry saplings waved. Now trees, grass and shadows frame a stately hemlock hedge. The asparagus bed gone, covered by mulched leaves and weeds. Between our houses, the tennis court now a garden with white wrought iron chairs. Looping driveways still there, but no bicycles racing over child-made obstacles. Can you hear Monopoly arguments Echoing from the side porch shade? Mourners inside the house remaining pay respects, looking out the wide front window down the hill where we sledded on one white Christmas morning. Three houses built side by side, one left standing like a loyal guard in the middle of this mountain town. We returned with longing for voices and laughter and love of adults who knew us from our beginnings. None are here. We have shifted generations.