Childhood Memories Thrown In A Jar
Beth Williams
I remember helicopters on the evening
news and lots of leaves. My parents
seemed to be crying. That’s the day
I walked to the end of the driveway,
a white man in a sedan stopped,
then drove off quickly. I played hide
and seek, hid in a ditch, and no one
ever found me. I wouldn’t go back in time,
even though I miss my mother every day.
When I was with her, the sun moved across the sky
like a ball thrown to a child, slowly,
so I could catch it. I say let me stop
for a second, but that time has already
moved on. Reverse is really just playing
it again, there is no way to go back.
My father moved like a lumbering train,
his breath puffed smoke from a stack.
He liked to sit on the screened porch
during thunderstorms, gliding
on a metal frame. He chased
me around the house with a belt
but never caught me. Some days I still
find myself running. I knew studying
atoms would make me forget the soul
but I still think of the boy who drowned
every time I paddle under the bridge.
I hugged the rotten pecan tree
before a crew came and chopped it down.
I couldn’t bear to watch the saw
divide its limbs, the crane take its body
away. Trying to keep today
from leaving is like trapping life
in a jar or holding air in my lungs.
It can't be done.
Beth Oast Williams’s poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle's Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.