Vox Populi
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Sydney Lea: What Shines?
-for my sister Jane
Astonishing, this never-ending effort
to have had a happy childhood. Why does it matter
now, why will yourself into all that forgetting?
She may have been a good mother– at least she tried.
Or did she? Once again, you’re the one who’s trying.
You contend you do remember moments that glow:
you picture her standing one day in the snow, her teeth
in a chatter, no doubt, and yet she looked quite cheerful–
or she seemed to be trying. As you are. The teeth at least
were one good feature, radiant to the end.
You were poised at the top of a hill on a Flexible Flyer,
red sled that shone, your Christmas present at nine.
It may have brought you joy. You’re trying to alter
the down-slope rush, to make it shiny too,
to blot out the icicles of snot, the raw
fingers, chilblains. Pain. A father was there,
a good man, you’re quite sure, who’s now no more
than a specter, whose presence is no more advantageous
than on that day. Or was it of some avail?
You can’t remember. You honestly can’t remember.
Perhaps you just don’t want to. You’re doing well–
at least you’re trying– with this, your obstinate bid
to sweep off misfortune, to see if there’s anything more
than only sorrow. Well, there were certain instants.
You say, I remember stones. You say, I saw
a beach by moonlight. And did those pebbles glint
like stars, as you insist? You yearn to be sure
clouds never came to eclipse them. You keep on trying.
There’s that pervasive gleam along the shore.
Then you take a step and suddenly there’s nothing
Copyright Sydney Lea. From What Shines (Four Way Books, 2023).
The author of many books of prose and poetry, Sydney Lea was Poet Laureate of Vermont (2011-2015).
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Thanks, Trisha:
Sorry to be slow. Our internet has been out till just now, thanks to storm!
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And in this memory time when turns stand out to one sibling and not the other, the telling and the not-what-I-remembers, two different pictures and the negatives lost in a box in the attic.
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yes, the siblings grew up in different families.
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My sibling and I grew up in same household with opposite memories of the same events
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O wow, Syd. Devastating, heartbreaking, and tender all at once. Thank you.
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Thanks, Carlene. I think the poem is a masterpiece of tender grumpiness.
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To quote you, dear Micahel: I think the poem is a masterpiece of tender grumpiness! And, indeed, so well crafted.
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Thanks, Laure-Anne.
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Syd Lea’s poems never disappoint, and this one is particularly moving. So many questions here for the reader to ponder. Not of just the poem and the speaker, but also of one’s own memory and the human tendency toward selectivity in our memories. How many of us have recalled a story of our childhood only to have a sibling argue an opposite account leaving us reeling?! I have walked away from several such encounters leaving me to ask if I made it all up? What is truth if our memories can’t be verified or relied on? Disturbing and mysterious as terrific poems should be…just as disturbing and mysterious as our lives…
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Yes, disturbing and mysterious. Also, accessible, recognizable and well crafted.
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On the surface, a contrary and curmudgeonly poem, a man speaking, remonstrating, correcting his sister, but it’s much more than that: a meditation on memory and its connections with will and emotion, on family relationships, on time. At this season, when we are striving perhaps to create or recall merry Christmases past and present, for ourselves and for others, it’s a timely one. Thank you for sharing it. I have ordered the book.
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Excellent assessment, Maura. Thank you.
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