46 Catherine St.

Sarah Russell

From my poetry collection, I lost summer somewhere.

I hid behind the spirea bushes over there, by the steps,
chewed the bitter leaves, watched old Grandma Yonkers
in her lace up shoes and cotton hose mince slow,
slow, with her squeak-wheeled shopping cart,
an hour to the store and back. She never saw me,
or at least she didn’t say. The house is run down now.
Probably was then too, but kids don’t notice shabby
when it’s theirs. Screens are rusty, porch sags,
sidewalk buckled higher from the oak. Dad said
it should come out, but it’s outlived him and will outlive
me as well. Its acorn caps made high-pitched squeals
between my thumbs I crooked just so. We’d rake
its leather leaves in piles at the curb, light fires in the twilight,
watch embers spit into the blueblack dusk,
the scent of autumn in my hair.

Sarah Russell
First published in I lost summer somewhere

28 thoughts on “46 Catherine St.”

  9. Oh, I love this, Sarah! You made Grandma Yonkers so real, with her ‘lace up shoes and cotton hose mince’ – I could even hear the squeaky shopping cart! You’ve also conveyed the time and place so vividly I felt I was there, ‘the scent of autumn in my hair’.

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  10. Your visuals really place me there. Beautiful I lived in broken down, paper glued together. I mostly lived outdoors.

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  14. Who has time to notice shabby when there are twilight leaf fires to look at? The kids have the right idea.

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