Green Peas at Stake

For Keeps

“You still use that thing?”
What a question!
My favorite tool
those tongs in the kitchen
to pull the hot toast out of the toaster
that you glued with tiny hands
twenty-six years ago
in school:
a clothes pin in between
two tongue depressors
and the recall of your granting me your gift,
your boy’s eyes aglow with pride,
handing me the fruit of your ambition and labor
in pursuit of praise and appreciation
that led to one tiny family legend.

Little do you know that when those tongs
hold the morning toast
they also shake hands with me
in your place,
pulling me close to remind me
of other tangibles I keep inside a shoe box:
a lock of your baby hair, your first doodling
on a piece of lined paper,
a bitten piece of a crayon, red in color,
one tiny sock, one tiny mitten that lost its pair,
and your tyke shirt, Dr. Denton’s, size three-months,
which you outgrew within the first couple of weeks.

All these little things stir the memory
of your enormous ability to change my world
with your baby smell, your baby warmth,
your child’s laugh,
and your first “I love you”
that caused the time to stand still.