Storing Images in Memory’s Freezer
is a lot like storing snowballs we’d made in our Norge freezer,
hoping to keep them ready for future snowball fights,
forgetting that in their frozen state they’d be missiles of destruction.
Opening up memory’s freezer, I find ice cubes in our old aluminium tray,
ones containing glass shelving hung above my bed,
holding the plastic container
holding the top of my mother’s wedding cake,
bride and groom intact, but only there;
I find photographs of me taken at home, professionally,
the white sheet set up on the wall behind me,
my ‘bare canvas background’,
highlighting my costumed self, spangled and shiny,
tap shoes ready for rhythm;
I find the masonic ashtray on our coffee table, my dad’s,
one of the few items he kept at home, and my chore
to keep it clean after the few times a week he’d make an appearance;
I find my turtle who died at fall’s first frost,
frozen in his small plastic home, my forgetting to bring him in from the porch,
no revival even with the radiator’s heat. Just like those snowballs
I never got around to using in snow warfare, but kept in the freezer to be on hand,
my memories of childhood persist, ready to be pulled from their trays,
ready, when melted a bit into the present moment, to help me understand
what my stored self might share with my present one.
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