Backward Looking

Reeling back through all the lifetimes of my life ,

I hear again ancestral voices of the massive form of

my father’s mother snoring next to me,

her long slow breath inhaling the night.

And I creep out on tiptoes from morning’s toothless mouth,

those blind eyes following me down the steep steps of

the decades. In the kitchen my aunt accepts my polite lie,

that “Aye, t’was a lovely night” and lets me lift the long

handle of the butter churn and plunge it through the

narrow aperture tuned to the rhythm of her voice,

“Three pounds if it’s an ounce,”

says auntie who seemed as old as Tory’s tower,

and who could quickly shift from melancholy to laughter.

The golden scoop that once was cream seeped

with a salty tang into my sleepless palate,

and then the ancient form appeared once more

in triple petticoats of black that became her like

a shroud though she was a kindly granny feeling

her way down the narrow staircase to the fireplace.

Reaching into the old brass kettle on the mantelpiece

she handed me a thruppence coin for ice-cream at

the village store. And in my dreamtimes I feel

her presence and that golden cream still

churning in the hollow borders of my palate.

Irish through and through, Hugh Curran of Surry has served as co-director of the Emmaus Homeless Shelter in Ellsworth and is a part-time instructor at the University of Maine.