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Cardinal Points

~ Poetry By Sandra Sidman Larson

Cardinal Points

Category Archives: Childhood

Small worlds of blue

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Over a Threshold of Roots, Seasons, Weekend Weather Chapbook

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circled our cottage door,
each flower cluster a replica
amassing blue in summer when blue
greeted me everywhere.

Cresting sand dunes, wind whipping
my towel into leggings, I saw
a blue line so stretched out
it had to curve to stay on earth.

Tugged skyward by the taut, unreeling string, I followed
my box kite as it rose, swooped into blue, and when it fell,
I flung it again into the morning wind. Bayside
by afternoon, balanced on snail-coated rocks,

I netted blue-shell crabs, held them
at arms length as Father had taught me,
and, on my way home, listened to their claws scratching
against the inside of my pail.

Evenings, on the screened porch reading by a lamp
set on a table with wobbly legs, I sat side by side
with Nancy Drew. In her blue roadster, we were two
independent girls, driving into the curve of mystery.

After bedtime prayers, I remember distant trains
whistling, always whistling on a straight line
to somewhere curved, somewhere
beyond our cottage, and the blue hydrangeas.

Weekend Weather

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in adulthood, Childhood, Seasons, Weekend Weather Chapbook

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For Wills Henry Larson

My grandson is six.
The maple leaves, mint green.
Last night we watered forgotten
flowers, noticed their colors
had turned sad. A wasp at the edge
of the porch worked its way
across its own life.

My grandson laughs and says,
Last night after I went to sleep,
I got up and opened my door.
I told him it was a strange,
rainy night for sure.

And a steady downpour this morning.
Eating waffles with maple syrup
we watch rain splash on the deck.
It will save the flowers we missed,
too profuse for us to reach last night.

His mother and father gone
for the weekend. The pines
and maples are entwine in the yard.
For him, at his age, the two of us together
is as natural as the trees.

My three-year-old granddaughter, her first Halloween

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Weekend Weather Chapbook

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for Natalie Katarina Larson

Pumpkins with rickrack
smiles and yellow burning
eyes line the walk. A flapping
ghost with broom feet hangs
by the front door to greet
the costumed children clutching
plastic pumpkins, black-cat grocery bags
advancing toward the unknown
of this stranger’s house.

I whisper to
the beautiful Belle
dressed in rhinestone tiara
and silvered gown,

O.K, Natalie, go ahead, knock.
She whispers back,

In a minute, Nana, I’m getting
my witch words ready.

The New World

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Dark burnished bronze skin
covered his whole lean body.
That was all he was wearing, standing
on the front lawn of the Montclair Art Museum.
He was a young boy, probably about my age
when the sculptor had fashioned him.

I stood there staring between his legs.
A small limp stick resting on a sack of marbles
where a slit was supposed to be.
All the leaves in the large maples rustled
like a grandmother coming upstairs.

He seemed comfortable wearing only himself,
oblivious to my gaze. I suddenly saw
words pass by in my head: My father is like that,
all the boys in my school are like that,
all the boys in my class standing right here!
How do they stand it?

My second grade teacher, Mrs. Lowe,
hurried us on. “Let’s go inside, children,
so many wonderful pictures to see.”

I dutifully stopped in front of all the paintings
and felt their colors wash over me, but what
I was really thinking about was outside:
how, just now, I had divided in two.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

The Facts of Life at Camp Nyoda

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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sex

Pat, one of my cabin mates, thought she was a horse.
Every morning she got, whinnying and galloped out
onto the hillside. Through the screen door, I studied her
eating oats. Jane slept in the bunk next to mine,
her sour breath drifted over me. Crying softly
in the dark, she whispered, headaches hurt.

On Sunday evening we gathered around the campfire
with our camp director, “Cha-woo”, who,
dressed in emblem-decorated deerskin, lit
three candles for work, health and love as we sang,
We come, we come to our council fire with measured tread
and slow to light the fire of our desire, to light the fire
of wo-he-lo, wo-he-lo, wo-he-lo
.

The following night in bungalow number eight,
Susan began to read aloud about a very young, Latin American girl,
the youngest girl ever to give birth, or so Time Magazine said.
I was even more surprised by this than the reporter.
How can she have a baby when she isn’t even married?
I asked. Laughter. A messenger of God disguised
as Susan’s cabin mate spoke. Silly, don’t you know
the facts of life?
She outlined them. It was evening.

My face was as hot as last night’s campfire,
my heart galloping like Pat’s legs in the morning, my breathing,
as labored as Jane’s with her migraines. I walked out into the field alone, toward the lake. The setting sun was like a sheepherder collecting colors off
all the trees, the rocks, the grass, the barn walls
until I too was as black as sheep, huddled against
the oncoming avalanche of a rushing moon.

Published, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

Now What Will We Do?

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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My panty-clad mother stands before the ironing board crying,
wiping her eyes with one hand, sawing
the iron over shirts with the other.
She’s drawn the drapes against the intense
summer heat. An odd shaped light surrounds her desire.
My father’s missed another promotion from the bank.
She waves the iron near her ear as she shakes
out another shirt.

Why can’t he push himself, speak up?
Now what will we do? Now what will we do?

In the dining room I open my Bible coloring book,
select a black crayon and draw a handlebar
mustache on the face of Jesus. 
Mother sets down her iron, advances on me
and snatches up my efforts.

Never deface the face of Jesus, never—
even atheists don’t do such things!

She shakes me back and forth
as if to iron the devil out of me.  I thought,
Jesus wouldn’t mind, he’s as gentle
as my father.

Published Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

Wearing Pink in Glen Ridge, New Jersey–My Hometown

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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sex

Nothing important happened in my hometown.
Well, nothing ever happened that anyone was willing to talk
about to Catholics, newcomers or children. Nor did I gather
useful information eaves dropping
at my parents’ parties from the top of the stairs
on Saturday nights when I was just a child.
Have you heard the one about two poops in a baby buggy?
The Dow looks a bit shaky, time to put. (Or was it call?)
The suit collection at Best & Company is very classic this fall.
Martini straight up or on the rocks?
The Colored are getting closer.
It nothing you could put in your pipe and smoke—
Two hearts, three clubs, I pass.

As I got older, Italians moved in.
On our annual tour to see our neighbors’ Christmas lights,
we came upon one yard with masses
of multicolored bulbs strung out
across the roof like guy wires from a circus tent.
Blinking, twinkling lights ran from the eaves in all directions
with red-nosed reindeer everywhere. A giant, lit-up
Santa sat smack in the middle of the yard.
Will you look at that! Mother exclaimed.
So garish! Must be Italians. I countered,
Well, you can’t be sure just because of what’s on their lawn.
She had the perfect reply. Oh no? Well, look over there,
isn’t that the Virgin Mary?

As Congregationalists or Episcopalians, we took it
as our religious obligation to be rational in my home town.
Who then would spend money to buy a Cadillac
when Lincolns were so much more tasteful?
In mys enior year my boyfriend Jack Cuozzo (be careful,
they are so hot-blooded) created the most lasting incident
when his taste was called into question.
Jack came to school wearing a pink, buttoned-down shirt.
Mr. Black, the principal sent him home and posted signs
on the trophy cases on every floor which read:
Male students are expected to dress appropriately.
No pink is permitted!

The next day almost to a person, our class showed up
wearing something pink and Dr. Cuozzo called
the principal and brought in his attorney,
so Jack was back. Mr. Black watched helplessly
at graduation as we walked in, the class of 1955,
flourishing a banner fashioned in pink and black.
Some years later we heard he called us
the worst class to graduate from Glen Ridge High School.
By now I think they’ve altered that opinion
since my hometown has become famous for the high school jocks
who raped the neighborhood retarded girl
with a broom handle and most of the town thought,
or so I’ve heard, it was a scandal and a shame those boys
had to do some time in prison when the parents were willing
to pay the girl’s doctor bills. Wasn’t it best just not to talk about it?
My God, these boys were college bound!

Not many residents were very interested in giving information
to reporters or willing to search out a wider point of view.
I wonder what my parents would have thought
about this incident, but they are both dead,
and I never said anything to them, anyhow,
before they died, about what I learned sitting
at the top of the stairs on Saturday nights
when I was just a child.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

An Adopted Granddaughter Who Didn’t Know It

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Grief, Over a Threshold of Roots

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for Anthony Wills

1879-1914

It is the eyes—slightly protruding, dark.
He stares at me.  Holding the crumbling
photo I ask, Who is this? 

Your grandfather, my mother replies.
Then who is the grandfather I call Grandfather? 
The man in the picture follows this question
without taking his eyes off of me. 
My father died when I was seven years
old, and
Nana married again,
the grandfather you know,

my step-father.  He adopted me.

My mother looks like a little girl hiding behind
this man in the picture she’d covered up
for so many years.  I look exactly like him. 

She is silent.  He is silent.
I stare right back at him—
the man with my eyes. 
My blood thickens.

Published, Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

Clothes in the Closet

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Love and Lust, Over a Threshold of Roots

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sex

dozens of cloche hats,
shoe boxes, fancy high heels,
dresses sequestered in zippered bags—
the sisters searching
for their mother’s sequined,
knee-length, flapper gown
and her sailor costume
with middy blouse.

A sister afternoon—
the younger practices
the fine art of being taller,
flaunting
tiny, shimmering flakes
of white and pastel sequins,
so heavy in their
accumulation.

The older readies
for an ocean voyage,
packing what can’t be packed
until she gets there.

A flock of scarves,
like gull wings, flutter
down off the shelves
exposing a submerged book–

The Art of Love-Making: 100
Oriental Positions to Enhance
Your Marital Relationship.

No sailor blouses, no sequins,
in fact, no fabric to cover
the facts of life.  The book
is finally shut— if not closed—
put back in its original position.
The shoes are reboxed, the clothes rehung—
their mother’s dress-up world,
closeted for now.

Published Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

The Seventy-year-old, Blue Brocade Dress

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Childhood, Over a Threshold of Roots

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From the old trunk I lift the blue brocade
dress of my great grandmother—her “Sunday best”—
when she was a young girl.

I slip it over my head and close
each mother-of-pearl button
over my torso, smooth out the flowing folds,

hold out my hand and escort myself
into her garden, the one filled
with magnolia trees.

A million magenta buds begin to flower.

Published Over a Threshold of Roots, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

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