You read Mommy Woes most recently. And then you heard KJ Hannah Greenberg talk about writing and parenting and squeezing 50 hours out of a day on 15 Minutes of Poetry. Today we get a look at childhood not through the eyes of a mommy, but through memory as childhood evaporates in the grown-up realities of the adult world.
Lake Wyola’s Mile High Farm: Sociology in America
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
All dirty calico cats, and blanket-wrapped horses,
Seems oceans away, off limits, prohibitive,
To all but melting snow.
Birmingham’s Corner Cinema patrons,
Plus Ma’s second load of plaid shirts,
dungarees, aprons, socks.
The family’s heirloom quilt squared
against intergenerational angst,
Press horizons for more cycles.
As youth, we loped stretches of undeveloped property.
No one but raspberry bushes witnessed our kisses.
Years later, that brush gave way to dirt bikes, then condominiums.
You married a university girl.
My grandfather, when a boy,
Was secured, by Danish men,
In a haystack for foreign Jews.
He was sired by fright and longing.
War years later, weathered by more than cows,
Such family bounty slipped to America.
Where excited acrimony nurtured the remnants.
Turning pride to denial.
I was raised as much a New England girl
As those blue-eyed Mayflower descendants.
Our pregnancy brought hope of futures.
Anti-Semitism wears so many faces.
Weathered silos and taxes fully paid
Are pittance against blue blood.
My forebears’ discoveries resurface
In the Berkshire Hills.
