At Dinner Time

–after “On the Back Porch” by Dorianne Laux

I lean against the chilly glass and peer
through to a mirage of greenery, leaf-filled 
wings, into another world outside the sliding 
door, the patio filled with hummingbirds
dipping and diving, enjoying the sugar
water, I’ve just refreshed the mosaic feeders.

It’s hard to say what I like most about
this part of the day. Maybe the fact
I know I have a good man waiting
for me in the other room, who soon
will sit beside me and spoon the tomato 
bisque I’ll be making for dinner.

Behind me, my new puppy chases 
sliced carrots I’ve scattered across
a marble floor, they spin and slide, 
her paws pushing and pawing at thin 
orange carved veggies. Tomorrow
will be another day, something yet

to happen could change the course 
of my life, but at this moment, all things 
seem right. The ivy-overgrown rises
towards the roof tiles nearly reaching
the top, as they curl over the old brick
and become dormant for winter’s days.

They stagnate in slow motion as I gaze
at the gable, a sign of summer has ended. 
My youngest daughter sings a Joni Mitchel 
song playing her soft blue guitar. It fades
in and out of the room, her door open; 
I can see her sitting on the edge of her bed.

An aria fills the air with hope. Years ago, 
my parents would have been here, too. 
My mother, sipping her glass of chardonnay, 
noting on the chrysanthemum’s shade of lavender, 
my dad watching the news, asking when 
dinner will be ready, my grown children 
once creating bustling sounds of joy, 

family chaos since quieted. Oh, to the glory 
of little feet trampling past in a flurry of wonder, 
days vanished yet echo as I stand here, 
paralyzed for all that’s been and all that’s yet 
to be, my heart a binary organ forever 
divided by gratitude and grief.

Picture the Past

          It’s easy, you think, to remember being 
young—part child and animal, before you learned
what it meant to be human. I mean before
you did what you were told to be a good human
the kind of human your mother would be 
proud to say she created. You owe
your mother that, you think, once you’re old
enough to understand, gratitude, once 
you’re old enough to recognize guilt
and once you’re old enough to value 
what it means to have empathy.
          But it turns
out being young isn’t easy to remember
when you try because so much of your memory
is fueled by black-and-white photos
moments between breaths when someone,
probably your mother decided she needed
to keep your image forever. Who knows why,
as forever isn’t real, either, if you are talking
about a human lifespan. So, the memories
you have of being young are just a reimagining
of something now intangible.
          All this is to say
whatever you remember about that time in your life—
you were probably never as good as you thought
or as bad, and you weren’t even as you thought,
you were something else entirely and that something
else is the exact part you will never be again. So
remember, your remembering is serving one purpose,
to help or hurt your nostalgic heart: nothing you recall
from those days is or ever was the way you remember
it, which is the reason you’re able to go forward,
reinventing whatever is needed to carry on.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is a thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012, she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018, her book, In the Making of Goodbyes was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry, and her poem “A Mall in California” took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. In 2021, Her latest collection, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded an honorable mention in the Poetry category.

Her work can be found online and in print and has been featured in Mezzo Cammin, Verse Daily, and many more. She is a former editor-in-chief for the Tule Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Women’s Wisdom Art, an organization in Sacramento that supports women’s wellness through creativity in all forms. Her latest collections of poetry, Handful of Stallions at Twilight (Finishing Line Press) and A Shared and Sacred Space (Kelsay Books), are newly released this past summer.