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Contests : Margaret Reid Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2009 : High Distinction
SESTINA: ALL THE BROKEN TOYS
You line them up, all those toys since baby
years through childhood. The ragdoll your mother
sewed when you were eight. Your father
bought that leather cap (now torn), another
gift so hard to liberate. A friend
once said, "Just hide them in a chest."
But hiding them means feeling in your chest
that they still need you: the waiting baby
doll, frayed panda, TV dog, the turtle friend
who clicks his tail when dragged across your mother's
fresh-waxed floor. You lift another
charm, the silver dollar coin your father
gave you "For a Fine Report Card." Your father—
dead six years now—hid it in a tiny cedar chest,
sweet-smelling still. A missing latch. Another
clench inside you. You feel like such a baby
to be so hung up on these relics from Mother
and Dad. When you lost your friend
to a heart attack last year, you befriended
grief again, holding hands with Father
Death. You wished you could ask your mother
what to do. But she's gone, too. What chest
of toys can bring them back: lost baby
teeth, a friend, a parent, then another?
So you gather up the broken toys for another
time and ponder what your sister (no friend
to hanging on) said: "Don't baby
yourself. We think these things, grandfathered
into our hearts like a treasure chest,
will make us safe, arrest the clock. But motherlove
is in our bones. The motherlode
is what we give away." So another
treasure's been revealed. Your aching chest
swells with more than turtles to befriend.
Such words you'll nurture, tend, and father.
They'll never grow and disappear like babies.
You vow to be a mother and a friend
to all that's baby-broken in this life, your open chest
releasing all that holds you: another toy, a father, an empty nest.
This poem won a High Distinction award in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Author Christine Hemp received a $200 award. Winning Writers assists this contest. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Christine Hemp
Christine Hemp is featured periodically on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition reading her commentary and poetry. Hemp has also been a poet-in-residence at three of our National Parks, and her work is now available in the cosmos—a poem of hers blasted off on a NASA mission to monitor pre-natal activity of stars. She teaches at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival and lives in Port Townsend, Washington.
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