Garage Sale

Today is my grandmother's 86th birthday. Over dinner, she had us read some of the poems she's written over the years aloud. I'll inevitably post more when her anthology comes out, but for now, here is one of my favorites. Enjoy.

Garage Sale
By Eve Stedman

After so long my attic memory
is cluttered, cumbered, by a stash of verse,
a hoard that once I valued, toted home.
Today I'll sort, perhaps find buried treasure,
some golden ballad stored against the winter,
a diamond couplet, or a silver sonnet.

Why, there it is...rather a tarnished sonnet
yet it still glimmers in my memory
like the last embers of a fire in winter.
I can recall the day I found that verse
glittering on the page, a glowing treasure.
How eagerly I nursed the fire at home.

And here's the ballad that I carried home
to decorate my wall, hang next the sonnet
that was my first discovery, my treasure.
The ballad disappoints. My memory
recalls it as a summer garland verse
brilliant with blossom. Oh, but this is winter.

One cannot hope for garden flowers in winter
and yet I long to bring a bouquet home
arrange the similies in a vase of verse
to set between the ballad and the sonnet
to make another rhyme for memory
to stash away with all my attic treasure.

I'll have a garage sale. I'll share this treasure.
Make bonfire of these rhymes against the winter,
give you an ode for keepsake memory.
And ballad ornaments to grace your home,
a polished couplet and a well-turned sonnet
and garland draperies of lyric verse.

You shall have these for your own store of verse
and, line by line, amass your attic treasure
a golden ballad and a silver sonnet,
a feast to feed the famine days of winter,
a vase of flowers to make the house a home,
a melody to sing in memory.

So clear the memory, toss out the verse
Vacuum the home, jettison every treasure.
I'll endure winter warmed by that first sonnet.