Today I’m double-focused: looking up answers to my wife’s tax questions about Popcorn Press and Hobby Hearse as she asks them, and finalizing layout and proofing of Alum, a forthcoming, postumous book of poems by my friend Shelly Hall. Here is one of my favorite pieces from the book—heck, one of my favorite pieces ever:
Point of View
My earliest memory of joy
is the sky in my face full
of bright petals of sunlight
rustling in the big maple’s
high branches, clinging there
by the translucent green,
so silly and elated above me.The earliest memories of you
are always of our house,
its rooms hunched back
well under the eaves,
its air matted with shadow.
In my clearest memories
you always stand awayfrom the big picture window,
the one place the light can
sneak in, shimmering, playful.
You always stand
where I can never see
both your face and the sky.—Shelly L. Hall