Monday, July 29, 2013

Slice of Life - July 30, 2013 -- Sepia Memories


The Tuesday Slice of Life is hosted by Stacy and Ruth on their blog Two Writing Teachers.  Here's my weekly Slice.



Sepia Memories
By Max Maclay

The faded picture
Emerges, piece by piece.

The corners are Solid.
The outline obvious
But in soft focus.
Details are both sharp
And…absent.

Drama Club at Oberlin:
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.
Drug store sodas
Dascombe Dormitory by 8PM.

Graduation and letters.
He was visiting from Brown University.
A log by the Passaic River:
Mosquitoes.

“We decided to do it--
Get Married.
We weren’t even holding hands at the time.”

Seventy years later
Holding Hands:
They help each other remember.



© 2013 Max Maclay



Last year, my grandparents moved across the country to a retirement community about ten minutes away from my house.  It is wonderful to share more time with them, even as they slow down at ninety-one and ninety-two respectively.  Monday, I interviewed them about how they met and this poem was inspired by our conversation.









7 comments:

  1. So lovely! A little glimpse into another time and lingering thoughts of love.

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  2. Love this! What a beautiful poem in honor of your grandparents, and what a privilege it is to get to spend time with them!

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  3. What a love story! How lucky you are to have your grandparents so close.

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  4. I love the snippets of thought and pauses and line breaks --- kind of like the conversations at the end of When Harry met Sally. :-) Interview them all you can. You are lucky to have the opportunity to capture those glimpses.

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  5. What a great story/poem! I hope you shared it with them!

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  6. The neat thing I find about your poem is that its 'frame' is a single faded picture, but you don't focus on one moment -- instead, you provide one-line fragments of many moments and memories. These come together to create a single picture. Nice!

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  7. What a beautiful tribute. The line that I kept thinking about was "The corners are solid" To me I saw their relationship, their marriage, their devotion to each other as being solid. I don't know if that is what you intended but that really stuck with me. Thanks for sharing.

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