Five Poems by Kathleen Chamberlin

 

All My Yesterdays

I found a photo album the other day, its cracked black leather holding pictures of a time and place I used to inhabit,

Inside were the smiling faces of relations long gone:

My parents, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, and even the great-grandparents I visited in Astoria before we moved.

They appear youthful and smiling, as they sometimes are in my memories.

They always smiled for the camera even if at other times, their faces contorted with annoyance, impatience or rage.

But here, within these pages, time is frozen, the instant of happiness an eternal now.

Here's one of me in my carriage, dark eyes drinking in the visible world.

It is both me and not me.

Here’s one of my mother holding me close, her check pressed against mine. Although she appears happy, surrounding me with protective love, she was less so in real life.

Say “cheese”!

Here I am at the Jersey shore, alongside my brother and mother, holding the rope line where the waves break.

The camera captures me with my mouth wide open, the cold sea spray rushing around my knees, my bathing suit hanging off one shoulder, exposing one childish nipple.

Here is my older brother. He is dressed in shorts and sneakers, holding a ball and glove awkwardly. It is summer and we stand together in another photo, holding hands, as we were told to, the wind blowing his shirt, my sundress and my hair.

I never remember him this way.

In this one, we play in the sand alongside my father. We are both somewhat shy, I think. At least we look self-conscious.

I remember some of these moments vividly. Others are only a whisper, a texture or the smell of the ocean.

Here are my grandparents! I sit with them at the small kitchen table in the walk-up apartment.

“Walk on your toes,” my father would say, taking the steps two at a time, “we don't want to disturb the other tenants. And so, we did: one flight, then two, one more and we're there.

There are no photos of that staircase, but I remember every polished wooden step.

Here's a photo of my aunt, my mother's older sister and my grandmother's favorite. My mother knows this, has always known this, and despite the smiles they wear, the undercurrent of jealousies runs deep.

My aunt lived around the corner from us in Astoria until both families moved to Long Island. Rocky Point was their home, originally a log cabin built before indoor plumbing was a requirement. In these photos, it is nestled among ancient trees near the Long Island Sound.

We trekked to the outhouse with a flashlight, hearing crickets and seeing spiders, fearful of being alone in the darkness.

Here I stand at the top of the wooden stairs that took us down to the water's edge. The stairs seemed endless but the cool, inviting waters kept my small legs moving

Down, down, down to the rocky shore.

Pebbles, rocks and boulders of all shapes and sizes brought us closer to the shimmering small breakers. The photos can't capture them as they really were: a million cameos ranging in color from white to peach to mottled brown. 

In this photo, I stand outside my father's childhood home. It is Easter Sunday. I am visibly uncomfortable from my expression. My coat seems ill-fitted and my broad hat sits awkwardly on my head.

Page after page, I watch myself and my family growing older. It is overwhelming, so much more than I can absorb.

So many memories! So many years gone by. Tiny tiles of a larger mosaic, or tiny threads assembled, a tapestry of many interwoven lives.

Now and Then

Where are you

When moments sweet and tender

Spring forth and beg to be remembered?

When the laughter of carefree bygone days

Echoes unbridled and exuberant

A reminder that life was once boundless joy and adventure

Where are you when the storm clouds rumble,

Harbingers of the heaven’s display of lightning flashes and tumultuous thunder?

Do you crawl inside yourself shivering in fear

Or face the howling winds, eyes filled with excitement, hair blowing?

Where are you when a whiff of perfume takes you back to your grandmother’s bedroom

When you breathed in the cologne on her dresser

Or when the aroma of an ethnic dish transports you to the kitchen

Where the meat simmered on the stove while your mother and aunt

Peeled carrots and potatoes and you and your grandmother snapped beans?

Do you grow wistful, wondering where those days have gone?

Brief and ordinary, unremarkable and yet

Bittersweet memories you’ll never forget.

 

Blood Echo

There is an echo in the blood,

Remnants of those who came before,

Experiences and passions

Passed from mother to daughter to daughter,

Rippling, though remote, filtered by time,

Expanded in each new birth.

Knowledge embeds itself in those tiny cells, shared in the womb,

Red stained with experiences,

Pulse beats circulating, flowing,

Remembrances recorded,

Resonating through every breath and heartbeat.

We call it intuition: a feeling sharp and sudden.

Sensing things unseen, unspoken,

Understanding without hesitation

That silent siren setting our senses alert,

Moving us to call, to act, to reach out:

The echo of experience, passed through our mothers’ blood,

A gift inscrutable and unending.

Escape

She swims through the currents of air

Hair floating behind her

Like a deep sea mermaid

Finding the currents that thrust her high above the rooftops,

Threading the way through forests,

Smooth silver lakes, like the wide-open eyes of the earth

Watch her

Her skirts billowing behind her, like the clouds she climbs.

Sun-kissed, loosed from gravity’s tenuous hold

Girlishly giggling at all she sees,

She extends her arms

Pushing the air behind her

Until it thins and grows colder

Revealing the blue blackness

As stars too numerous to count twinkle and beckon

Trembling, she teeters on the edge of all that tethers her

To her life below the clouds

Her father’s face appears

To tell her the choice is hers to make

She can leave the business unfinished

She can escape from care and woe.

She sways momentarily caught by the currents of eternity

And makes her choice.

Grief's Burden

 

Grief is the suffocating air on a humid day

Sodden and oppressive

Every breath labouring,

Clinging to every pore,

Weighing on every muscle.

Grief is the thickening fog after a storm,

Disorienting and blinding,

The pathway shrouded, making our steps tentative,

Arms outstretched, groping for stability:

Staggering toward a future filled with echoes

Of stilled voices and haunting smiles

Fading like willow-wisps.

Grief is a gale force wind, whipping wildly against our citadel

Threatening to tear the roof off,

Battering the windows until they shatter,

Bringing us to our knees as surely as an uppercut to the jaw.

Grief is a flash flood, a river overflowing its banks,

Sweeping away everything

Churning up mud and toppling even the mightiest oak.

Grief is the shrapnel of an exploded bomb,

Penetrating the body and scarring the soul,

Permanently embedded, removal impossible.

Grief is the silent scream,

The clawing animal, dragging itself

From somewhere deep within the heart’s core

Burrowing, settling itself, an unwanted weight that must be carried.

Kathleen Chamberlin is a retired educator living in Albany, New York. She began writing creatively during the quarantine period of Covid-19. Her writing has appeared in both print and online journals and anthologies. In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, genealogy, and grandchildren.