Thoughts of Home

The First Impulse toward Fiction

—In memoriam, Eleanor Ross Taylor, 1920–2011

Eleanor, do you rememberThe names you wrote in the icebox,Hidden down under the lid?Made-up names and addressesIn your tidy fourth-grade hand,People on Park and Hilltop,Circles and Terraces, Crescents(Their immediate background gray zinc,Though nothing to be ashamed of).

Where are they now,Those Bancrofts and Randolphs and Blairs?Violet, Undine, Priscilla,Still in their twenties’ dresses—Ashes-of-roses satin?Messenger boys rang their doorbellsAnd handed them boxes of flowers.They sailed to Europe on steamersAnd sat at the captain’s table.We could see the surging AtlanticBelow the pasture fence.

What boundless innocence!—not to say ignorance. StillHow pleasant it was,There on the screened back porch—The names, the dreams of the ocean—And you there.

Home Town

You’ve changed. I must have thoughtEverything stopped the day I went awayLeaving you stuck there in the forties,Still thinking about the war.

Now the mill’s gone, the mall’s come,The school’s small Doric columnsReplaced by long and low,The Upchurch house, with its tower, torn down—You’re too much like the other places now.

You’re an old flame I’m glad I never married.Besides, you never loved me quite enough.Whom did you love—those town girls in their sweater sets,Playing “The Scarf Dance” at recitals?(“Country Gardens” was my best recital piece.)

Still, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.I’ll think of you—as if I could keep from it!I wish you all the best; take care. Good luck.Goodbye, old dear.