Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Barbara Crooker: On Teaching Poetry Classes in My Old Elementary School in Honor of Its 100th Anniversary
Yes, I know my mother isn’t there, as I walk up and down Main Street;
she’s moved to a different zip code, the one with no returns.
When I was twenty, I worked for the summer here at 12524, sorting
mail in the morning, taking down the flag at night. If you were to look
down Main Street, facing east, you’d see not much has changed
since the 1900s, except there’s no trolley now, and the street is paved.
But I’m still hoping to see her, maybe in Stern’s department store,
the one that carried summer cardigans. Or at the Busy Bee
having a milk shake, frothy in the glass, the rest of it waiting
in a cold aluminum tumbler on the side. I’m looking
for her friend Winnie, whose mind left long before her body
failed; she might be buying a card in Rabbit’s Pharmacy.
Or for Marian, Ginger’s mother; she might be picking up dinner
at Karl Ehmer meats or the Bogardus General Store. I’m looking
for the deep shade of old trees, moss on the sidewalks, maple wings
stuck on the noses of boys. . . . Here is the Dutch Reformed church
that served as a jail in the Revolution. Here’s the bend in the creek
where we used to go swimming, the railroad tracks we crossed in winter
to the frozen pond beyond. Here is the street where we went sledding;
this is childhood’s end. But my mother’s not there, nor her friends, nor mine.
All the shops have changed hands, been renamed. Only the mountains remain,
row after row of every shade of green; women taking their ease and resting,
after their long day’s work is finally done.
From Slow Wreckage by Barbara Crooker (Grayson, 2024). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author.
Barbara Crooker is the author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry. Her many awards include the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature.
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As Barbara Crooker walked me through her memories of her old neighborhood, and compared the changes made to what it use to be, I remembered how it felt when I did the same thing in the old neighborhood of my childhood.
But thank God for the gift of memory, because when memories decide to visit, many times they show-up as poems, complete with beautiful words and phrases. It’s a beautiful poem.
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Thank you so much!
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Thank you Michael…
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This poem is both clear and dreamy. Beautiful.
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Yes, I love Barbara’s poems. Clear and yet dreamy.
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Thank you!
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Thank you, Lisa!
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Every morning, I greet a tree, and, turning around, I thank the imperturbable Santa Ines mountains, reminding me that:
“Only the mountains remain,
row after row of every shade of green”
….. long after we have “moved to a different zip code, the one with no returns.”
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Lovely…
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Thank you so much!
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And I was back in Altadena, the drug store, the cold silver milkshake. After yesterday’s meltdown when someone sent An Irish Lullaby, there is so much longing for my mom. Perhaps a journey to my childhood home below the mountains? This is why I love poetry.
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Thank you!
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Lovely memoir of Americana. Such has many tellings, so glad you gave this one
Thankyou.
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Yes, I love Barbara’s clarity and compassion.
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Thank you!
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