Poetry: Richard M. Grove/Tai

I was helping to pack up my parents’ house

of thirty years. With a magic wand

shrink its contents from full house

with large workshop and two studios

to what would fit into a two bedroom,

one bath condo. Two thousand books

were not going to fit. Paintings from every wall

were not going to fit. Antiques collected

over sixty years were not going to fit.

“Father which of these almost identical lamps

would you like to take?”

“All of them. I will find a spot for them.”

“Father which of these eight pairs of shoes

in the black recesses of your closet

covered in the white dust of time

do you want to take?” “All of them.

They are all good shoes.”

Dear dear Father lost the battle

on many of our questions

that we stopped asking.

We shoehorned him and Mother

into the condo.

In the end, it killed him.

Jotted on a Page Torn from My School Binder

For my darling wife, Kim

I smiled with an, echoing-me,

seventy-year-old, friend

talking about our youth. I mentioned

that I have written my share

of fifteen-year-old, star-twinkling,

lovelorn poems, poured out

from my annexed heart,

crushed,

jotted on a page torn

from school binder, slipped

to a blond, beautifully freckled,

doe-eyed dream for whom

I cannot even remember her name –

was it Suzie or Jane or Jan? Did she

truly have any idea of just how

cool I was with my bell-bottomed

hip-hugger trousers,

hand-beaded choker

marking the territory of a proudly

exhibited love-hickey slightly covered

by my longer than shoulder-length hair?

I glide through every stage of my life

colouring the reality of now

with glimpses at the past.

I dance with my darling blue-eyed wife,

slipper sliding across dining-room floor

twirling her into our future.

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Setu, May 2022