30 Poems in 30 Days: Fundraiser for the Ithaca Sanctuary Alliance

  SEPT. 29 Reminiscence            Carol Whitlow   This was your childhood home, Molly, Not just these floors and windows, But these people, neighbors, friends The landscape of characters.   We went to visit Lieu. “She doesn’t have much, time,“ I warned . Lieu told her daughter: “Bring those pictures from the bottom drawer And Tiffany brought out a bag of photos As if they had been waiting for this moment.   We carefully studied the prints. To each one we said, that’s Joanne, Is that David, look how young he was, Molly said, “I still have that red dress Angela only wore it once.”   And there’s your mom And there’s  your  mom And doesn’t Vivi look beautiful in that long dress And You went to my grandfather’s 100 th  birthday party   And so our daughters, Lieu’s and mine, watched as we travelled back in time And space, around the globe and back, Our lives, intertwined, our children, our parents, Moving in and out of our lives like colors in a sunset, Our homes, our jobs, our joys, We rev

  SEPT. 29 It’s funny how forgotten people can suddenly turn up.          DAVID REGENSPAN               Some time after my widowed mother’s death I was looking through her basement in preparation for an estate sale, to see if there might be any items worth salvaging before everything went on the auction block.  There was a table full of tools rusted with age.  Distasteful vases, useless jars, broken pole lamps.  There was a bookcase along one wall.  The whole thing was painted a discolored off-white and, so far as I was concerned, was no more a candidate for my own acquisition as were the other items.  The books themselves, however, might be another matter.  They were old looking, true, with faded bindings, but there was also the possibility that one or two of them might have some value.               There were various items in Hebrew and Yiddish.  These, then, must have been books belonging to my grandparents.  Both my Hebrew and my Yiddish are spotty, but I was able to decipher enou