THE BROKEN ARM

Of course I steal peaches from Mrs. Lewis’ tree.
It bursts from among the tenements like a bouquet
rising out of the asphalt into sunshine, with peaches
as big as grapefruits, firm and yellow, with a smudge of red,
and covered with a fur that makes my tongue itch
when the sweet, warm juice spills from the split skin.

So, with Tina and Lena, Rosie and Mary
all fixed on my ascent, I climb the knobby tree,
while they point and yell
Get that one!
I have to cock my head
and squint through my Bat Man mask
to locate their perfect peach.
But I do.

And I stretch through long tubes of sunlight
toward the fruit which hangs
motionless and heavy and with light all around it.
I reach and feel its warmth with my fingertips.
I reach and close my hand around it.
I reach and step triumphantly
onto the corner of my Bat Man cape.

I don’t remember the fall—
or hitting the ground
but I lie on my stomach,
arm twisted under me,
and open my eyes to an earth tilting
back and forth like a seesaw,
and the air has the blurred smear of a dream.

I spend all of Third Grade
with my arm in a cast.
People bring me gifts,
ask about me, do my work,
and hold my arm gently to sign the cast.

But when the school year ends
the doctor cuts away the plaster—
a hardly noticeable slice
from the thumb up to the forearm.
He opens it like a big razor clam
and it saddens me
to see the thin, dark arm lying there
like a brown snake which has shed its skin.

I stash the cast in my desk drawer
and that whole summer,
until my arm puffs up enough
to make the cast too tight,
I slip it on occasionally
and tell everyone the arm is broken again,
the need for love swelling inside me
like peaches ripening in the sun.

CHILDREN PLAYING

after the Persian Gulf War

The heavy equipment,
done for the day,
is parked here and there
on the stripped lot
among hills of dirt
and felled trees,
scattered lumber
and half-framed houses.
Seven children are walking there,
single file,
their studied silhouette
as exact and crisp
as if it had been precisely cut
from the newspaper—
the familiar, sad gait,
the hands on top
of bowed heads,
the last child
pressing a plastic machine gun
to the lower back
of the child in front of him
walking there in the dusk,
playing surrender,
April exploding everywhere.

VERY PRETTY

Point O’ Woods, South Lyme, August, 1999

So early in the morning,
and yet too hot for her to walk
even a step or two.

We sit her in a plastic lawn chair,
secure her with a bed sheet
huge and cool around her frail body,

and Ma, elegant and 70 pounds,
waits with apprehension
to be lifted to the top
of forty-seven steep and crooked steps

to the landing that overlooks
the cottage roof where a gull sleeps,
and below that
a sail on jeweled green water.

At the top,
with the sun impatient for 97,
we stand with her a moment
as she looks out on the bay.

Very pretty, she says, very pretty.

And I think of those words
as sweetest memory
the very moment
she is speaking them.

                                     for Katherine Conkling