Vox Populi
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Rachel Hadas: Rainbow Parfait
At the end of every summer,
Labor Day looming, school about to begin,
the family used to go to the Columbia Faculty Club
for dinner our first night back.
Air conditioning. Clinking ice.
Waiters in buff jackets.
View from the nineteenth floor of Butler Hall
out over Morningside Park.
What we talked about,
our father and mother and my sister and I,
all hot and tired after the eight, nine, ten-
hour drive down from Vermont,
is lost to the melt of memory.
The ritual dessert, though, sticks with me:
Rainbow Parfait, a multi-colored column
of sherbet stacked in a tall frosted glass
and topped with a maraschino cherry.
You had to poke and dig to get to the bottom.
Even the long-handled spoon was cold.
.
A lot of life feels horizontal.
Time stretches out and you can look ahead.
Lately, though, before I fall asleep,
my impulse is to tunnel back and down.
It is possible
to be the archaeologist of one’s own past,
as if the sleeper, wakened now, alert,
was perched at the top of a trench
peering at something shining down below
and excavating down, down, down
through the strata of decades
with a long-handled spoon.
Copyright 2023 Rachel Hadas. From Ghost Guest (Ragged Sky Press, 2023)
Rachel Hadas is the Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University—Newark and the author of more than 20 books of poetry, essays, and translations.
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I agree with Michael, Barbara: your two reactions are most welcome!
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Sweet. Punnishly-speaking. A good morning.
Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks, Robert.
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And sometimes the long handled spoon finds something less sweet than sherbet, but I love how memory gives us or parfaits.
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Please accept my apology. I read this upon waking from a nightmare. After I awaken and read Vox Populi , I meditate. Today my monkey mind insisted I go back to my childhood and find a different reaction. There was a drugstore that sold the best hot fudge sundaes—a chilled silver chalice, creamy vanilla ice cream, toasted almonds, whipped cream, a small pitcher of hot fudge, and yes, a long handled silver spoon. A moment of happiness I needed to go back to.
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Thanks, Barbara. No need to apologize. You have two distinct responses to the poem. Nothing wrong with that.
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Lovely, Barbara!
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