Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Tracy Alig DowlingAugust 18, 2003

I am sure it rained there. But that is not what I remember.
I remember sitting in a black-green 1938 Chevrolet
watching mulberries rot into red-purple paste on hot concrete.
I was breathing red clay dust
while my mother shopped at blue Krogers
and I stared at the man pulling celery stalks
out of the wooden trash barrel.
He was wearing a wool overcoat.

Maybe it snowed in Sullivan, Indiana, but that is not what I remember.
I remember crayons melting into hot wax pools,
the suffocating dulcet of catalpa blossoms
and caterpillars covering a cracked driveway.
A slate gray Maytag chugged on the open back porch,
extruding diapers, towels and sheets. Down the street
the neighbor children played in their underwear.
The straps of my sunsuit kept falling down.

Probably there was sleet and ice, but what I remember
is Pentecost’s lemon-lily cross carried high,
a sun overhead setting fire to white dresses, veils, suits and ties,
children so young in white cotton gloves,
necks graced with brown felt tags,
the shimmering halo of heat around Sister Mary Patrick,
who lived her 1,500-year rule of moderation
in black serge modesty.

Perhaps there were mild days, but I remember only one,
sitting on the grass beside the swingset. The soft buzzing
grew louder and I looked up at the star on the plane’s wing.
Does it have a bomb, I asked my sister.
The war’s over, she told me, the war’s over.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024